On May 15th,
2015, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Safety and
Inspection Service (FSIS) issued its final Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) Compliance Guideline for systems validation. The release of the Compliance Guideline comes
after many revisions since the first proposal back in March 2010.
FSIS’s Compliance Guideline
was issued with the goal of providing assistance to companies, especially small
meat and poultry plants, to meet the validation standards required for HACCP
systems under 9 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 417.4. Validation of a HACCP system is the process
of demonstrating through data that the system in place will be able to
adequately control any identifiable hazards to produce a safe, unadulterated
product.
According to FSIS,
compliance guidelines were necessary because many establishments were failing
to adequately validate their HACCP systems. Significantly,“[i]n
2012, FSIS concluded that E. coli (non-O157) positives likely occurred because
of improperly designed interventions." Similarly, FSIS determined that "an
outbreak involving chicken pot pies in 2007 and a 2011 outbreak from turkey
burgers may have occurred because of improperly validated cooking instructions.”
Companies now have
the opportunity to immediately incorporate the issued compliance guidelines
with their existing HACCP system. FSIS stated that after January 4, 2016 it will begin checking large establishments to
determine if they have met validation requirements under 9 CFR 417.4. Smaller
establishments will have until April 4th, 2016, before inspections
begin. According to FSIS, the time frame
is provided to allow establishments the opportunity to collect all the data necessary
to meet the validation standards.
Written by Katharine Richter - Research Assistant
June 4th, 2015
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