HACCP Certification

What HACCP Is and Who Publishes It

Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points is a preventive food safety method. Rather than relying on finished product testing, it identifies the biological, chemical and physical hazards that matter in a specific process, then controls them at the points where control is essential.

The method is set out by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the intergovernmental body established by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization. The current text sits in the General Principles of Food Hygiene, reference CXC 1-1969, which was revised in 2020. That revision restructured the document into good hygiene practices in the first chapter and the HACCP system in the second, and placed more weight on food safety culture and management commitment.

Codex publishes the method. It does not audit anyone and it issues no certificates. That distinction is the source of most of the confusion around HACCP certification.

The Seven Principles and the Twelve Application Steps

The seven principles are the substance of a HACCP plan:

1. Conduct a hazard analysis and identify control measures.
2. Determine the critical control points.
3. Establish validated critical limits for each critical control point.
4. Establish a system to monitor control of each critical control point.
5. Establish the corrective actions to be taken when monitoring shows a deviation.
6. Establish procedures to verify that the HACCP system is working as intended.
7. Establish documentation and record keeping appropriate to the operation.

Codex applies those principles through twelve steps. The first five are preparatory work that auditors examine closely, because a weak flow diagram undermines everything downstream: assemble the HACCP team and identify the scope, describe the product, identify the intended use and the consumer, construct the flow diagram, and confirm the flow diagram on site. The remaining seven steps are the principles above.

Which Certificate You Can Actually Obtain

There is no accredited certification against Codex CXC 1-1969 in the way there is against a management system standard, because HACCP is a method rather than a set of management system requirements. Food businesses that need a certificate use one of the following:

• ISO 22000. A food safety management system standard that requires a HACCP plan alongside prerequisite programmes, management responsibility, communication and improvement. Certification bodies operating under national accreditation bodies issue accredited certificates against it.
• FSSC 22000. ISO 22000 plus sector specific prerequisite programme standards and additional scheme requirements. It is recognised by the Global Food Safety Initiative, which is what most large retailers and manufacturers ask for.
• BRCGS Food Safety, IFS Food and the SQF Food Safety Code. Other Global Food Safety Initiative recognised schemes, each of which requires a documented and implemented HACCP plan based on Codex principles.
• A non accredited HACCP attestation. Several certification bodies will audit a HACCP plan against Codex principles and issue a statement of conformity. It can satisfy a small customer or a tender clause, but it is a contractual attestation, not an accredited certification, and you should describe it that way.

Regulators treat HACCP as a legal requirement rather than a certificate. In the European Union, food business operators must put in place and maintain permanent procedures based on HACCP principles under Regulation (EC) No 852/2004. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration requires HACCP for seafood and juice processing, and the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the Department of Agriculture requires it for meat and poultry establishments.

How Univate Prepares a Food Business

1. Scheme selection. We start from who is asking. A retailer specification, an export requirement and a domestic licence condition point to different schemes, and picking the wrong one wastes a full audit cycle.
2. Prerequisite programme review. Cleaning and sanitation, pest control, personnel hygiene, maintenance, water quality, allergen management and supplier control. Most audit non conformities land here rather than in the HACCP plan itself.
3. HACCP study. Product descriptions, verified flow diagrams, hazard analysis with reasoning recorded, critical control point determination, and critical limits supported by validation evidence rather than assertion.
4. Monitoring, verification and records. Monitoring frequencies that a shift can actually sustain, corrective action records, calibration, internal audit and management review.
5. Audit support. Internal audit, mock audit against the chosen scheme checklist, and support through the certification body audit and any non conformity closure.

Points Worth Being Careful About

• Not every hazard needs a critical control point. Over declaring them produces monitoring records nobody maintains, which reads worse to an auditor than a lean, defensible plan.
• Critical limits must be validated. A cooking temperature copied from another site is not validation unless the product, pack format and equipment match.
• The Dutch HACCP scheme is no longer available and certificates issued under it ceased to be valid from 1 January 2021. If a specification still names it, the specification is out of date.
• Allergen control is where most recalls originate. Treat it as a designed control with cleaning validation and label reconciliation, not as a line on a cleaning schedule.
• Flow diagrams must be confirmed on the floor, on all shifts. Rework loops and temporary workarounds are exactly what the on site confirmation step is meant to catch.

HACCP Questions We Are Asked Most Often

Is there such a thing as accredited HACCP certification?

Not against the Codex text on its own. Codex Alimentarius publishes the HACCP method but certifies nobody. Accredited certification is available against food safety management system standards that embed HACCP, such as ISO 22000, or against Global Food Safety Initiative recognised schemes such as FSSC 22000, BRCGS, IFS and SQF. Certification bodies also sell non accredited HACCP attestations, which are contractual statements rather than accredited certificates.

What is the difference between HACCP and ISO 22000?

HACCP is a hazard control method. ISO 22000 is a management system standard that requires HACCP and adds prerequisite programmes, leadership commitment, planning, competence, internal audit, management review and continual improvement, which is what makes it certifiable.

How many HACCP principles and steps are there?

Seven principles, applied through twelve steps. The first five steps are preparatory: assemble the team, describe the product, identify the intended use, construct the flow diagram and confirm it on site. Steps six to twelve are the seven principles.

Does my HACCP plan need to be re-examined?

Yes. The plan should be reviewed whenever the product, process, equipment, packaging, supplier base or intended consumer changes, and periodically as part of verification even when nothing has changed.

Which regulator requires HACCP?

It depends on the market. European Union food hygiene law requires procedures based on HACCP principles for food business operators. In the United States the Food and Drug Administration requires HACCP for seafood and juice, and the Food Safety and Inspection Service requires it for meat and poultry. Many other jurisdictions impose equivalent requirements through their national food safety authorities.

Send us your product range, process flow and the customer or regulator driving the requirement. We will tell you which certification route actually applies and what the HACCP study needs to cover before an audit.

Univate supports certification, assessment and compliance programmes for organisations operating across international markets. Talk to our team about scope, effort and the route that genuinely applies to your organisation.