1.4 Establish monitoring procedures

The purpose of establishing a monitoring system is to control your CCP, and prevent it from exceeding the critical limit. It has to be established immediately after the ccp is identified to adjust and to maintain control. A good monitoring system should answer the following questions: Who, What, How and the Frequency of monitoring.
Monitoring methods vary, depending on the control measures and critical limits.

1.5 Establish corrective actions

It has 2 purposes.
1. Provide an immediate action to make the food safe for consumption
2. To prevent the problem from happening again

If monitoring shows that there is a deviation from an established critical limit, either beyond or below it, it means that corrective actions have to be implemented. It is actually a set of preventive actions to correct the problem before food safety issue arises. Once again, corrective actions vary, depending on the control measures and critical limits.

References
1. Ensuring Safe Food- A HACCP-Based Plan for Ensuring Food Safety in Retail Establishments. The Ohio State University. http://ohioline.osu.edu/b901/chapter_7.html; accessed on 26th May 2008

2. HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points). City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council. http://www.bradford.gov.uk/health_well-being_and_care/food_and_drink/Food+Safety+-+New+Businesses/HACCP+(Hazard+Analysis+Critical+Control+Points).htm; accessed on 26th May 2008

1. CCP
1.1 What is a CCP?
CCP is a step or procedure in the food process at which control needs to be applied, resulting is the prevention or elimination of food hazard.

1.2 Identification of CCP?
After a hazard analysis is done for the product, we would then proceed with the CCP decision tree. A sequence of 5 questions would be answered to determine whether the CP is a CCP.
However, CCP differ depends on the different products. A particular process step maybe essential for us to control, however, a subsequent step will be used to eliminate the hazard. Thereby, it is no longer critical for us to control it.
A food product should not have many CCP, because it is not pausible. More CCP means that more process steps have to be controlled, it would be time-consuming and hectic to do so.

1.3 Critical limit of CCP
It is the maximum or minimum value at which a particular hazard would be controlled to prevent or reduce the incidence of food safety hazard to an acceptable level.

Examples of critical limit: Cooking temperature, storage temperature, time, etc.

I have basically covered the 2nd and 3rd principle for HACCP. I would continue to cover the remaining 4 principles at my next post.

References
1. Ensuring Safe Food- A HACCP-Based Plan for Ensuring Food Safety in Retail Establishments. The Ohio State University. http://ohioline.osu.edu/b901/chapter_6.html#2; accessed on 6th May 2008

2. Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point Principles and Application Guidelines. U. S. Food & Drug Administration, U. S. Department of Agriculture, National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods. (August 14th 1997) http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~comm/nacmcfp.html; accessed on 6th May 2008