1. Conduct a Hazard Analysis You should create a list of hazards that includes information for all the dishes you serve in your restaurant. Hazards to food safety include biological, physical or chemical agents that, if not controlled, are most likely to lead to illness or injury. You should include all ingredients as well as information on how the food is stored, how it was distributed and how it was prepared. In order for the hazard analysis to be thorough, it’s critical to understand the hazards that can contaminate food at every stage of the process. 2. Determine the Critical Control Points Once a hazard has been identified, critical limits need to be set to prevent, eliminate or reduce the hazard from leading to contamination. Some examples are cooking chicken to 165 degrees F to kill pathogens, storing meats at 41 degree F or below, and mixing sanitizer chemicals at the proper concentrations. These control measures should be trained and documented to show they are being followed every shift. 3. Establish Critical Limits Monitoring procedures should be set in place to verify the critical limits at the control points are being followed. Examples of monitoring are temperature checks of cold-holding units, using sanitizer test strips and checking cooking temperatures of raw meats. 4. Establish Monitoring Procedures Things can go wrong at any time. When this happens, a preset plan needs to be put into action. If at any time a critical limit is not met, steps should be taken to make sure the food doesn’t get served. For example, if raw chicken isn’t cooked to 165 degrees F, then it needs to be reheated back up to 165 degrees F before it is served. If cooling food doesn’t meet the required cool-down time, it should be discarded or treated to ensure it doesn’t cause illness. Monitoring procedures will identify times when critical limits aren’t met and the corrective action will correct the problem. 5. Establish Corrective Actions You can be pretty sure that no matter how well you try to track and prevent hazards from developing in your restaurant, there are always going to be situations where human error comes into play, and procedures are not followed the way they should be. A simple example could be if raw beef is out of date according to the label in the walk-in, you should avoid serving it to your customers. You should note who is identifying the corrective action needed and who is carrying out the correction. 6. Establish Verification Procedures You should verify that the HACCP plan is valid and operating according to plan. Create a verification schedule you can reference. It should list all activities related to following HACCP, the frequency of the activities and who has ownership of carrying out the activities. 7. Establish Record-Keeping and Documentation Procedures. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mark-tommy0/support