Certification
HACCP: A State-of-the-Art Approach to Food Safety
Space-age technology designed to keep food safe in outer space may soon become standard here on Earth.
The Food and Drug Administration has adopted a food safety program developed nearly 30 years ago for astronauts and is applying it to seafood and juice. The agency intends to eventually use it for much of the U.S. food supply. The program for the astronauts focuses on preventing hazards that could cause food-borne illnesses by applying science-based controls, from raw material to finished products. FDA's new system will do the same.
The new system is known as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, or HACCP (pronounced hassip). In 1998, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has established HACCP for meat and poultry processing plants, as well.
FDA now is considering developing regulations that would establish HACCP as the food safety standard throughout other areas of the food industry, including both domestic and imported food products.
HACCP has been endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences, the Codex Alimentarius Commission (an international food standard-setting organization), and the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods.
A number of U.S. food companies already use the system in their manufacturing processes, and it is in use in other countries, including Canada.
Need for HACCP
New challenges to the U.S. food supply have prompted FDA to consider adopting a HACCP-based food safety system on a wider basis. One of the most important challenges is the increasing number of new food pathogens. For example, between 1973 and 1988, bacteria not previously recognized as important causes of food-borne illness--such as Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Salmonella enteritidis--became more widespread.
There also is increasing public health concern about chemical contamination of food: for example, the effects of lead in food on the nervous system.
Another important factor is that the size of the food industry and the diversity of products and processes have grown tremendously--in the amount of domestic food manufactured and the number and kinds of foods imported. At the same time, FDA and state and local agencies have the same limited level of resources to ensure food safety.
Advantages
HACCP offers a number of advantages over the current system. Most importantly, HACCP:
- focuses on identifying and preventing hazards from contaminating food
- is based on sound science
- permits more efficient and effective government oversight, primarily because the recordkeeping allows investigators to see how well a firm is complying with food safety laws over a period rather than how well it is doing on any given day
- places responsibility for ensuring food safety appropriately on the food manufacturer or distributor
- helps food companies compete more effectively in the world market
- reduces barriers to international trade.
*Reference: FDA Backgrounder on HACCP