A HACCP based approach to food safety certification

Summary

​A review of On-Farm Quality Assurance in the Australian Livestock Sector was undertaken by Meat & Livestock Australia in 2002.

The published report from the review recommends, amongst other things, a two-tiered QA system for the livestock sector with a mandatory Level 1 Food Safety Certification Scheme.

In anticipation of this recommendation being adopted, it is prudent to identify the food safety aspects that should be effectively controlled on farm in the Level 1 Scheme. As part of the process, a comprehensive HACCP-based analysis of production of cattle, sheep and goats has been undertaken to justify and support the design of the Scheme.

The purpose of this document is to summarise the approach taken and provide a sound basis for the further development of industry standards which will become the Level 1 Food Safety Certification Scheme.

The approach taken was to develop a generic industry HACCP Plan which is broad enough to apply to all cattle, sheep and goat enterprises.

Various Level 2 schemes will address specific customer requirements over and above food safety and food safety related market access issues and are not covered in this paper.

This document considers food safety risks that have an epidemiological link to foodborne illness and food safety-related market access risks and identifies on-farm controls necessary to be included in a Level 1 Scheme for the Australian red meat industry.

It is not proposed that individual enterprises must develop their own HACCP plans for Level 1, rather further development work will be undertaken on standards for Good Agricultural Practice for Level 1 using this HACCP plan. The HACCP plan is a scientifically valid pre-cursor for this work