A Guide to developing your Documented Food Safety Management System

To develop your documented Food Safety Management System you need to complete the following steps:

What steps are there in the processes?

Think about all the foods that you sell/and or produce and list all the steps in the process, or things that you do to the food. It may be very simple such as purchase, store, display, and sell on, if you retail food, or there may be more steps if you prepare and cook foods. It may help to draw a simple flow diagram of what you do.

What are the hazards?

For each step in your process, think about everything that could reasonably present a hazard to food. Write all of these thoughts down. Look around your premises, concentrating on areas where food is stored and prepared and note down any hazards identified. Consult your employees, if any, as these may have a different perspective of the hazards. Remember two heads are better than one. It is also beneficial to consider any complaints that may have been received from customers which may identify a problem.

What control measures are required?

A decision must be taken on each hazard identified as to how it can be removed and/or controlled wherever possible.

Remember, the more specific the control procedures are, the easier it will be to monitor whether that the control is adequate.

What monitoring procedures are required?

These procedures are designed to ensure/check whether the control measures are working. Monitoring may include temperature recording for refrigerators and food temperatures, stock rotation checks, visual and supervisory checks. Each control should have a specific monitoring frequency, for example, ‘temperature readings will be taken twice on a daily basis’. Safe limits also need to be applied to these procedures, for example, ‘a temperature range of 0oC to 8oC will be accepted for food stored in refrigerators’.

What corrective action should be taken?

If your monitoring checks reveal situations where the safe limits are not met, you must identify what action should be taken to correct this and maintain food safety. Staff must also know what action to take. For example, if a check revealed a refrigerator temperature of 10oC, high risk foods should be discarded, and the temperature lowered until it reaches 0 to 8oC. 

Is this point a CRITICAL control point?

Whilst all control measures are important, a critical control point is one which is ESSENTIAL to ensure the safety of the food you handle. Identify any stage within production and/or retail which MUST be controlled in order to ensure that food is safe, i.e. any stage where:

• ready to eat food can become contaminated,
• bacteria have the potential to grow on ready-toeat food, and
• the process relies on killing harmful bacteria to ensure that the food is safe.

A critical control point (CCP) should be looked on as the ‘last chance to get it right’. Aim to have as few CCPs as possible, without compromising food safety. You can then put more effort into them to make sure that you get them right. If there are too many CCPs, they may not be addressed thoroughly. CCPs help you to concentrate on the most vital areas of your business.

Verification and Review:

It is important that your documented food safety management system remains a WORKING DOCUMENT. It is NEVER ‘complete’ as control systems are rarely perfect and require constant updating and improvement. For this reason, periodic review of your working systems is vital to ensure that the controls in place are adequate and are achieving their intended purpose.

For example, staff may be recording daily temperature readings, but are not taking appropriate action when readings are too high; or you may identify a simpler, less onerous, method of control which does not compromise food safety. The review process may also identify gaps in knowledge of staff. Ways of bridging that gap may be to discuss food safety issues at a staff meeting, to subscribe to a food safety journal, to consult your local enforcement officer for advice, or to attend an approved training course. The following are examples of what should trigger your review; change of menu, introduction of new equipment, structural alterations, or changes in key members of staff. In any case, it is recommended that you carry out an annual review or when something changes in your business eg a new product is introduced.

Documentation of procedures and record keeping:

It is a legal requirement to document your Food Safety Management system. The level of documentation will however vary depending on the nature and size of your business but may include:

• a documented copy of your Food Safety Management System
• training records
• cleaning schedules, pest control contracts, personal hygiene rules and other similar procedures and documentation
• records of your checking problems and action taken
• list of suppliers and customers

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