Food Safety Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Food Safety Management - Essay Example Hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) has emerged as a popular system of safety management and has become pivotal to securing the safety of the food supply and battle against the escalation of food borne disease.(Taylor and Taylor 2004).However as the instance of the Potter Foods example shows that small and medium sized businesses have found the entire process a "bureaucratic nightmare", and find the whole implementation of the HACCP complex and barriers.(Taylor and Taylor 2004).The system has its origins in the first US manned space Programme (Taylor and Taylor 2004 citing Buchanan 1990) and today it is "an operation specific system of preventative control, which identifies, evaluates and controls hazards of significance to food safety". On the facts we have been told that Potter foods has to as a matter of code of practice implement a food safety management system based on the Codex HACCP Principles with in a time frame of 2 years. It has been required that such a plan must cover all microbiological, chemical and physical hazards that might arise from the raw materials used, covering the entire of the manufacturing process, right up to the point of handover to the Customer. It was also specified that any support programmes, with the prerequisites must be effectively implemented with proper result.At this point I would suggest that such documentation must be completed upon a product-by-product basis and my project plan suggests that suitably qualified personnel should be employed to advance this process. Summary of the problem From the case study it is possible to glean that Potter's Foods being a medium-sized manufacturer of chilled ready meals based in the north of England has three large factory buildings dealing with bakery and party food items which are called Bakery, Chilled and Party .We have been told that the seasoning room and the raw material distribution centre are located in the same store and that the Company uses its own transport for work in progress foods or raw materials however it has not been mentioned that the distribution centre or its transport have proper refrigeration as this is very important for HACCP implementation and could be major reason for the foreign body complaints Potter Foods are facing. In the drawing up of the project plan it is pertinent to note that Potter Foods has to keep up its marketing edge as a flexible manufacturer, with low cost production and prompt delivery and at the same time utilise and keep up the customer confidence. It has also been mentioned that Party is an old building and may not be conducive to the HACCP implementation. There is a problem of taking action against suppliers for defective and unsafe food as it has been said that the raw materials purchased have little paper work into them. As mentioned before Potter's foods are having trouble with microbiological counts and poor equipment maintenance and there is consultation at an organised level with in the technical managers and directors. It has been stated that there is a large amount of wastage due to changes in raw materials suppliers and that the timing of the cooked foods and their temperatures is not adjusted for safety. There is also another danger as it has been stated