Hazard Analysis Procedure

Hazard Analysis Procedure
Hazard analysis consists of a systematic evaluation of a specific food and its raw materials of ingredients to determine the risk from biological (primarily infectious or toxin producing food borne illness microorganisms), chemical and physical hazards.

The hazard analysis is a two steps procedure: hazard analysis and assignment of risk categories.

The first step is to rank the food and its raw materials or ingredients according to six hazard characteristics (A – F).

A food is scored by using a plus (+) of the food that has the characteristics and a zero (0) if it does not exhibit the characteristic. The six characteristics ranking system is applied for microbiological, chemical and physical hazard ranking, although the characteristics are somewhat different for microbiological and chemical/physical hazards.

The second step is to assign risk categories (VI – 0) to the food and its raw material and ingredients based on the results of ranking by hazard characteristics.

Potentially highest risk is denoted by the highest number in the hazard category (i.e., VI).

In addition, note that whatever there is a plus (+) for hazard characteristic A (a special class that applies to food designated for high risk populations), the resulting hazard category is always VI, even though other hazard characteristics (B- F) may or may not be a plus (+).

Several preliminary steps are needed before conducting the hazard analysis. These include developing a working description of the product, listing the raw materials and ingredients required for producing the product, and preparations of a diagram of the complete food production sequence.

The listing of raw materials and ingredients is the starting point for the hazard analysis.

If the specific mode of preservation for an ingredient is not known, (raw, frozen, canned etc) the ingredient may be assessed for each type of preservation technique that may be utilized in preserving the ingredient.
Hazard Analysis Procedure