Employees of Simonds Farsons Cisk from various parts of the group, recently attended a course in Essentials of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) Practice.

Food businesses are required to identify any step which is critical to ensure food safety. They have to make sure that adequate safety procedures are identified, implemented, maintained and reviewed regularly.

In order to accomplish this, food companies must carry out an analysis of potential food hazards in food business operations. They should identify the points in those operations where food hazards may occur and after doing this they have to decide which of the identified points are critical to food safety. Effective control and monitoring procedures have to be implemented at those critical points. All this has to be periodically reviewed whether changes occur or not.

The course was run by instructors from the Occupational Health and Safety Centre of Gzira. It covered an introduction to HACCP and its development, the legal requirements of Hazard Analysis, HACCP principles and terminology, applying HACCP principles and implementing HACCP systems.