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As part of an ongoing EU harmonisation drive food businesses will be waking up to some new legislation on Jan 1st 2006. Gone will be the familiar Food Safety (General Food Hygiene) Regulations and the Food Safety (Temperature Control) Regulations, both from 1995, gone too another 17 other pieces of food safety legislation and in their place will be the long anticipated Food Hygiene (England) Regulations 2005.
Before you run from your office screaming "I just can't cope anymore, don't they realise how difficult it is to run a business these days?!" you need to remember Corporal Jones' immortal words from Dads Army - "Don't Panic".
True enough, the new legislation does now encompass the equivalent of 19 former statutes, but Perry Scott Nash has done all the research for you and we are confident that in most cases there will be little significant change to the day to day running of your business. The new Regulations effectively absorb the hygiene and temperature requirements of the old legislation word for word, with a few notable exceptions, namely a new HACCP requirement and a more specific training requirement for certain staff .
What's HACCP and what does it mean to me?
Food Business Operators are now required to implement a food safety management system based on the principles of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP). Businesses will be required to demonstrate that they are:
1. Identifying hazards that must be prevented, eliminated or reduced to acceptable levels. The "what can go wrong with my menu item?" question.
2. Identifying the points in the operation that are critical to food safety. These are called CCPs (Critical Control Points) and become the "what am I doing about it?" question.
3. Establishing the limits for each CCP, in other words determining what you consider to be the acceptable levels for food safety (e.g. cooking food to 75°C).
4. Implementing a way of monitoring the CCPS, for example checking the core temperature of cooked foods.
5. Establishing corrective actions - working out what can be done if something fails to meet the critical limit.
6. Putting in place procedures to verify that the control measures are working.
7. Maintaining documents and records to confirm both the actions to be taken and the results of the monitoring.
You mentioned training - now what have I got to do?
In all honesty, not too much. As long as you were regularly training your food handling staff before the new Regulations you'll be OK. The new legislation does however require that food handlers responsible for maintaining or developing the food safety management system (HACCP) must receive adequate training in applying HACCP principles. PSN are currently investigating ways that we can help with this, and all new PSN bespoke food hygiene courses will include references to HACCP rather than Hazard Analysis. It is certainly not expected that you will need to retrain your entire staff.
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