HACCP (pronounced “hassip”) stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, and its seven steps are a systematic framework for preventing food safety hazards before they reach consumers. Rather than testing finished products and hoping to catch problems, HACCP builds safety into every stage of food production. The system originated in the early 1960s when Pillsbury partnered with NASA to ensure astronaut food was safe for the Gemini and Apollo missions. The team applied spacecraft-level reliability thinking to food, identifying every point where contamination could sneak in and building controls around those points. Those original principles evolved into seven standardized steps now used worldwide.
Step 1: Conduct a Hazard Analysis
The first step is identifying every hazard that could realistically make someone sick or cause injury if left uncontrolled. This means examining raw materials, each processing step, storage, distribution, and even how the consumer will eventually prepare the product. The goal is to build a comprehensive list of what could go wrong.
Hazards fall into three categories:
- Biological hazards: bacteria like Salmonella and E. coli, viruses, parasites, molds, and toxin-producing organisms
- Chemical hazards: pesticide residues, equipment lubricants, sanitizer residues, allergens, or processing chemicals used at unsafe concentrations
- Physical hazards: hard or sharp objects like glass shards, metal fragments, stones, wood splinters, plastic pieces, or bone
Not every theoretical hazard makes the final list. Only those reasonably likely to occur and serious enough to cause harm move forward to the next step. A bakery, for example, would flag metal contamination from mixer blades as a realistic physical hazard but might not need to worry about parasites if no raw animal products are involved.
Step 2: Determine Critical Control Points
A critical control point (CCP) is a specific step in the process where you can actually prevent, eliminate, or reduce a hazard to a safe level. Not every step qualifies. The key question is whether control at this particular point is necessary for safety, or whether a later step already handles the risk.
Teams typically work through a decision tree to identify CCPs. The logic asks three basic questions: Does this step involve a hazard serious enough to warrant control? Does a control measure exist at this step? Is control here necessary to prevent the hazard from reaching consumers? If the answer to all three is yes, it’s a CCP. If a step involves a hazard but no control measure exists there, the process itself needs to be redesigned.
A common example: cooking is often a CCP because heat kills harmful bacteria. A metal detector at the end of a packaging line is a CCP for physical hazards. Refrigerated storage is a CCP when temperature control prevents bacterial growth. The number of CCPs varies widely depending on the product and process.
Step 3: Establish Critical Limits
Each CCP needs a clear, measurable boundary that separates safe from unsafe. These critical limits are specific numbers: a minimum cooking temperature, a maximum time a product can sit at room temperature, a pH level, a moisture content. They are not ranges or suggestions. They are hard lines.
For a cooking step, the critical limit might be an internal temperature of 165°F for poultry. For a chilling step, it might be reaching 40°F within a set number of hours. For a metal detector, it might be the ability to detect fragments above a certain size. Every critical limit must be backed by science or regulatory requirements, and it must be something you can measure objectively, not judge by feel.
Step 4: Establish Monitoring Procedures
Monitoring is how you confirm, in real time, that each CCP stays within its critical limits. This means planned observations or measurements at a defined frequency: checking oven temperatures every 30 minutes, testing pH at regular intervals, calibrating a metal detector at the start of each shift.
Effective monitoring serves three purposes. It tracks whether the operation is running safely. It catches deviations the moment a critical limit is exceeded, so you can act immediately. And it creates a written record proving the system is working, which becomes essential for audits and inspections. Every monitoring record should include the actual measurement, the time it was taken, and who took it.
Step 5: Establish Corrective Actions
When monitoring reveals that a CCP has drifted outside its critical limit, the plan must already spell out exactly what happens next. Corrective actions are not improvised. They are predetermined responses written into the HACCP plan before anything goes wrong.
Every corrective action needs to address three things: identify and fix the cause of the problem, decide what to do with any product made while the CCP was out of control, and document everything that happened and what was done about it. If a cooking step falls below the required temperature, for instance, the corrective action might involve re-cooking the affected batch, holding product for further testing, or disposing of it entirely. The cause of the temperature drop (a malfunctioning thermostat, an overloaded oven) also has to be identified and corrected before production resumes.
Step 6: Establish Verification Procedures
Verification is the step that asks: is this entire system actually working as designed? It goes beyond day-to-day monitoring. Where monitoring checks individual CCPs in real time, verification looks at the big picture over time to confirm the HACCP plan is effective.
Verification has two distinct layers. The first is validation, which happens when the plan is first created or whenever it’s significantly changed. Validation means proving, through scientific evidence and in-plant testing, that the plan can control the identified hazards. Does cooking poultry to 165°F actually eliminate the pathogens of concern? That’s the theoretical question. Does this specific oven in this specific facility consistently reach and hold that temperature throughout every batch? That’s the practical question. Both need documented answers.
The second layer is ongoing verification: reviewing monitoring records for gaps or patterns, calibrating thermometers and other instruments, conducting periodic product testing, and auditing the plan against current operations. If a facility changes suppliers, adds a new product line, or modifies equipment, the HACCP plan needs to be re-evaluated to make sure it still holds up.
Step 7: Establish Record-Keeping Procedures
Every action taken under a HACCP plan needs a paper trail. Records are what prove the system exists and functions, both to regulatory inspectors and to the company itself. Without documentation, a HACCP plan is essentially unverifiable.
Required records typically include:
- CCP monitoring logs: actual times, temperatures, or other measurements recorded at each critical control point
- Corrective action records: documentation of every deviation and the response taken
- Verification records: instrument calibration results, audit findings, and product testing outcomes
- Product identification: codes, names, or lot numbers linking records to specific batches
Each record must include the date it was created. For USDA-regulated products, retention requirements are straightforward: one year for refrigerated and slaughter products, two years for frozen products. After six months, records can move to off-site storage but must be retrievable within 24 hours if requested by inspectors.
Prerequisite Programs: The Foundation
The seven steps don’t operate in a vacuum. Before a HACCP plan can work, a facility needs prerequisite programs already in place. These are the basic hygiene and operational practices that prevent hazards from becoming likely in the first place. Think of them as the baseline conditions that make HACCP possible.
Prerequisite programs include employee hygiene practices, sanitation schedules for facilities and equipment, pest control, supplier specifications and incoming material inspections, allergen controls, and foreign material prevention. Sanitation Standard Operating Procedures (SSOPs) are a regulatory requirement on their own, separate from the HACCP plan. Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) cover traffic flow patterns, handwashing, proper clothing, and general product handling. If these foundational programs are weak, the HACCP plan will be overwhelmed trying to control hazards that should never have been introduced.