Create a Food Safety Management System in 8 Steps

8 Steps to Creating a Full Food Safety Management System

A full HACCP management system often comes in the form of a complete and comprehensive food safety manual. This document can be broken down into 8 sections (or steps). Each should be covered in as much detail as possible:

Step 1 – Policy

The first section of your food safety management system includes your policy statement. You should detail the nature of the work carried out in your business, your general legal responsibilities, your commitment to HACCP practices, and your commitment to ensure that the food you prepare and/or serve is safe for consumption.

Step 2 – HACCP Introduction

This is a general overview of your HACCP responsibilities and includes:

• Details of your business’ general HACCP responsibilities.
• A record of the person or team of people responsible for carrying out all HACCP duties.

Step 3 – Critical Control Points

This section of your food safety management system is one of the most important. It details all of the critical control point areas, risks and potential hazards in your business that must be controlled, eliminated or reduced. It also details your procedures for managing them. Find out more about the 8 critical control point categories here.

Step 4 – Enforcement officer inspections

This details the specifics of a visit from your local authority’s Environmental Health Officer / Practitioner. You should record your procedure for dealing with an inspection so that the process goes smoothly.

Step 5 – Complaints Procedure

In the event that you receive a customer complaint, you should follow a specific procedure to protect you from liability. This procedure should cover:

• Who deals with the complaint;
• How the claim is recorded;
• How you investigate the incident;
• What happens next.

Step 6 – HACCP Summary

This is where you record details of all of the food safety and hygiene risks in your business, together with specific hazards observed for each risk. You should record:

• Each risk group relevant to your business, e.g. food production risks, storage risks, waste management risks, etc;
• The Critical Control Point that risk group falls under;
• Specific hazard details for each risk group, and;
• The controls and corrective actions undertaken.

Step 7 – Physical Premises Standards

To ensure your premises is complaint with legislation and industry guidance, you should ensure that the design, structure and layout of the premises, and the provision of services, equipment and facilities, are maintained in a safe condition at all times.

Step 8 – Supporting Documentation

You should include templates of all forms used for record keeping (e.g. training, temperature checks, audits, etc). You should also include any other useful documents, such as flow diagrams for HACCP processes, or food traceability records. Other record templates to include could be training records, temperature control checklist, storage checklists, delivery receipts, audit forms, etc.