We talked previously about food safety and discussed which food safety plan you must have.  Before you can implement either a HACCP or a FSMA food safety plan, you need to make sure that you have your prerequisite program in place. These policies, procedures, and records are essential If you want to avoid making people ill and act as the core of your food safety plan.

Ready for your inspection? Where are your records? Do have your policies in place? Training a new employee? How can you make sure that every process is followed exactly? What are your sanitation practices

The policies are known as Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) and form the core of your everyday processes. GMPs including receiving ingredients, making product, sanitizing dishes, storage of materials. You, almost definitely, have GMPs now; however they are in your head. not on paper. So it is hard to tell what you have done and even harder for someone else to follow your instructions.

If you do any record keeping, every form you fill out MUST have a standard operating procedure (SOP) to explain how to do the task being recorded. SOPs are also important for processes that must be followed even if there isn’t a form to show that it is done.

If you clean and sanitize, which I hope you are, you need to have Sanitation Standard Operating Procedures (SSOPS) so that every time someone is cleaning and sanitation they do it the same as everyone else.

• You need prerequisite programs every time you check the labels you put on your food products, You need prerequisite programs each time you have a visitor into your facility.
• You need a prerequisite program to show how you are measuring temperature for your critical control points or your preventive control.
• You need a prerequisite program to implement your food safety plan.

Do you have a prerequisite program? No time to implement a prerequisite program? Need to know more about what a prerequisite program contains? Contact me!