Food safety and public health are top priorities for manufacturers, and a food safety plan can help protect consumers from foodborne illnesses and protect brand reputation.
Moreover, stringent regulations, such as the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), require food businesses to develop a proactive approach to handling hazards rather than responding to them.
This is why domestic or foreign food manufacturing companies in the U.S. must have a written and implemented food safety plan. However, managing it can be overwhelming. This is where our guide comes in.
In this article, I will explain the role of a food safety plan. You will also learn the essential steps to creating one and how digital solutions can help you streamline food safety plan management. Let’s dive in!
What Is a Food Safety Plan?
A food safety plan (FSP) is a set of written documents that outline the procedures and controls a food manufacturer, processor, distributor, or holder must follow to ensure product safety and prevent foodborne illnesses.
The FSP is based on a preventive approach and aims to identify, evaluate, and control potential hazards in food production. The plan incorporates the principles of HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points).
A food safety plan covers the whole supply chain, efficiently protecting public health and preventing contaminated foods from entering the market.
What Are the Elements of a Food Safety Plan?
Let’s see the key components of a food safety plan:
- Hazard Analysis
- Preventive Controls
- Monitoring Procedures
- Corrective Actions
- Verification Procedures
- Record-keeping and Documentation
- Continuous Improvement
- Supply Chain Program
- Recall Plan
These are the core facets of a robust food safety plan and the steps you must consider while developing it.
Why Is a Food Safety Plan Important?
A food safety plan is an obligatory option for a reason. Food manufacturers must have it to ensure compliance, enhance productivity, and protect the consumers. Here are the reasons why the FSP matters:
Regulatory Compliance
Having a food safety plan is an obligation. If you fall under the FSMA, your FSP must be written and implemented so you comply with the Human Food Rule. Additionally, maintaining accurate documentation for regulatory inspections guarantees that you are audit and inspection-ready.
Consumer Protection
FSP is critical to foodborne disease and cross-contamination prevention. Implementing the plan helps control hazards in food, protect public health, and prevent food safety incidents.
Waste Reduction
Following a food safety management plan will help minimize spoilage, contamination, and rejected batches. You’ll also avoid food waste and optimize resource utilization.
Brand Reputation
A food safety plan proves your accountability, maintains consumer trust, and reduces the risks of recalls and lawsuits. Altogether, it helps you build a firm brand name and avoid mistakes that can lead to loss of brand integrity.
What Is the Difference Between the HACCP Plan and the Food Safety Plan?
Although a food safety plan and a HACCP plan are similar, they have differences. HACCP plan can be a crucial element of a larger food safety plan. An FSP is broader and covers risk-based food safety management.
The FDA provided a comparison table analyzing both HACCP and Food Safety Plans:
| Element | HACCP Plan | Different in Food Safety Plan |
| Hazard Analysis | Biological, chemical,physical hazards | Chemical hazards include radiological hazards, consideration of economicallymotivated adulteration (21 CFR 117.130(b)(1)(ii)) |
| Preventive Controls | CCPs for processes | Process CCPs + controls at other points that are not CCPs (21 CFR 117.135(a)(2)) |
| Parameters and Values | Critical limits at CCPs | Process CCPs + controls at other points that are not CCPs (21 CFR 117.135(a)(2)) |
| Monitoring | Required for CCPs | Required as appropriate for preventivecontrols (21 CFR 117.145) |
| Corrective actions andCorrections | Corrective actions | Corrective actions or corrections as appropriate (21 CFR 117.150(a)) |
| Verification (includingvalidation) | For process controls | Verification as appropriate for all preventive controls; validation for process controls; supplier verificationrequired when the supplier controls a hazard (21 CFR 117.155, 117.160) |
| Records | For process controls | As appropriate for all preventive controls (21 CFR 117.190) |
| Recall Plan | Not required in the plan | Required when a hazard requiring preventive control is identified (21 CFR 117.139) |
How To Build a Food Safety Plan?
Food safety plan creation includes different steps, from general preparation to completing specific requirements. Let’s take a look at the step-by-step FSP creation checklist.
Assemble a Team
Start by gathering a team of experts from different departments. The FDA indicates that the FSP development must be overseen by a Preventive Controls Qualified Individual (PCQI). A PCQI is qualified to develop and implement a food safety system and may not be a company’s employee.
The assigned leader will guide the development and implementation of a food safety plan. They should have either job experience or complete FDA-approved training.
Define the Product
Establish and define relevant details about the food product. This will allow you to assess potential food safety hazards and establish safety controls.
For instance, you can define product characteristics such as name, ingredients, processing and packaging methods, storage conditions, shelf life, etc. You can also specify the target audience and how the product will be consumed (e.g., ready-to-eat foods).
Develop a Process Flow Diagram
Map out the entire production process, workplace setting, and other elements like processing steps, raw material receiving, storage, distribution, etc. Detailed visual representation like this will help implement efficient preventive controls.
The process flow diagram (PFD) shouldn’t be too professional and complex but must be verified with the production staff. Need help creating a PFD? Food safety software can help.
Conduct Hazard Analysis
Conducting a hazard analysis is crucial to identifying and evaluating potential food safety hazards. You must analyze every step of the food production process to check them for the hazard presence.
Generally, the steps you should take for analyzing hazards include listing all the processes, identifying potential hazards, assessing risks and their likelihood of happening, and determining preventive controls.
You should also include other hazards, such as radiological or allergens, in addition to physical, chemical, and biological hazards.
Establish Preventive Controls
Preventive controls are critical to eliminating and reducing food safety risks. Types of preventive controls include:
- Process controls. These operations (cooking, cooling, pH adjustments) remove a hazard or minimize it to an acceptable level.
- Food allergen controls – preventing cross-contact and implementing labeling.
- Sanitation controls – includes cleaning and hygiene.
- Supply-chain controls – ingredient testing, supplier approval, etc.
- Other controls.
For instance, concerning process controls, the safe cooking temperature for poultry to kill Salmonella must be 165°F (73.9°C). Allergen control will include separating gluten-free products from regular ones, and sanitation controls are about personal hygiene and separating raw and ready-to-eat foods.
Monitoring Procedures
This step means consistent evaluation of the efficiency of preventive controls and whether critical limits are followed consistently.
The monitoring step involves systematic observation and documentation of Preventive Controls to confirm compliance with established limits.
Corrective Actions
You must develop a corrective action plan. In case of deviations from critical limits, taking corrective action helps prevent contaminated food from reaching your consumers.
The steps you must take in such a situation will be:
- Identifying the root cause.
- Immediate corrective action, such as discarding the food.
- Documenting the issue and how it was resolved.
- Review and improve preventive controls.
Corrective actions back up preventive controls, and updating them is crucial so the issue can be prevented earlier.
Imagine a scenario in which you didn’t cook the chicken to the required 165°F. In this case, you must identify the root cause—let it be equipment malfunction—and take corrective action—either recook the meat or discard the batch.
The next step would be to record the incident, noting the batch number, temperature readings, and actions taken. Then, you review and improve the preventive control (calibrate the thermometer or conduct equipment maintenance).
Here’s how corrective actions can be taken in a real-life situation.
Verification Procedures
You must verify and validate your food safety plan to ensure it works correctly and as intended. These are continuous processes and include regular record verification.
Key verification activities include internal audits and inspections, equipment maintenance, and microbial testing for pathogens.
Record-keeping and Documentation
Proper recordkeeping is necessary for food safety plan documents and regulatory compliance, traceability, and audits. Any changes, improvements, and revisions to the food safety plan should be documented.
Here are the records you must maintain:
- Hazard analysis reports
- CCP monitoring logs
- Supplier verification records
- Corrective actions
- Employee training records.
There’s also no established format for a food safety plan in the U.S. You can approve the format with local food regulatory authorities.
Supply Chain Program
According to the FDA’s requirements for a food safety plan, food manufacturers must have a risk-based supply chain program if the hazard analysis identifies a hazard that requires preventive control, and it will be applied in the facility’s supply chain.
However, you don’t need that program if you manage the hazard in your facility or it is controlled by a subsequent entity (such as another processor).
The supply chain program ensures you control the hazards associated with raw materials and ingredients before they enter production. Especially if risks are not fully managed within the facility.
Recall Plan
A recall plan is a must-have that will help you ensure that in case of an identified hazard, contaminated, mislabeled, and unsafe food will be quickly removed from the market to protect public health.
Continuous Improvement
In our blogs, we often mention the importance of continuous improvement. FSP is not a static document; it requires constant improvement to stay effective and compliant.
By regularly reviewing audit findings, monitoring data, and taking corrective actions, you can identify new potential risks before they occur. Your commitment to continual improvement strengthens food safety, protects consumer health and your reputation, and optimizes operations.
When Do You Need To Update Your Food Safety Plan?
The time you need to update your food safety plan depends on different factors. Here are the cases when you should review and change your food safety plan:
Annual update
First, you must update the plan annually, even if no significant changes happen. A regular update keeps you compliant and up-to-date. Yearly updates can be based on industry trends, company growth, regulatory changes, etc.
When regulatory requirements update
The food safety industry is dynamic. Laws and standards, such as FSMA, HACCP, GFSI, and others, can change and emerge quickly. If you are subject to a new or updated rule, you should review your food safety plan to reflect the changes and stay compliant.
When you add new ingredients, recipes, or suppliers
Adding or modifying ingredients can lead to new potential hazards, so your task is to update the plan according to the modification.
When installing new equipment or changing the processes
The plan must reflect modifications to production lines and installations of new equipment, as these events can impact CPPs and preventive control and cause new contamination risks.
After a Food Safety Incident
In case of a recall, nonconformance, or foodborne illness outbreak, you must review and improve your food safety plan to prevent recurrence.
After an Audit
If an auditor finds gaps, you should address nonconformances in your food safety plan and review it. Also, you must update the plan if an internal audit reveals an issue.
Overall, apart from regular annual updates, the food safety plan must be reviewed and updated after each change, nonconformance, or improvement in the processes.
Extra Tips for Efficient Food Safety Plan
Creating a food safety plan requires a strategy and extra effort to boost the procedure and avoid mistakes. Here are some additional aspects to consider when writing a food safety plan.
Invest in Training
Efficient team training is key to success. Arrange hands-on employee training to help them understand their roles in managing a food safety plan. Remember about refresher training to maintain and improve employee skills.
Make it Practical and User-Friendly.
Avoid cumbersome structures in your food safety plan. Instead, make it clear and straightforward so your employees easily understand and follow it. You can use flowcharts and visual aids to describe the steps.
Use Food Safety Software
A manual food safety plan is outdated, counterproductive, and prone to human errors and time waste. Implement food safety software to automate recordkeeping, monitoring, and reporting. This solution will help you digitize the processes and create an efficient food safety plan.
Write Your Food Safety Plan With a Digital Solution
Creating an effective food safety plan can be overwhelming, and you might need help to manage it in the context of evolving regulations and extensive documentation requirements.
With FoodReady food safety management software, you can digitize your paper-based records and spreadsheets and streamline food safety compliance. Our platform is a perfect solution for automating and managing hazard analysis, monitoring preventive measures and critical control points (CCPs), building a recall plan, generating reports, and implementing corrective actions—each food safety plan component in one centralized platform.
We offer real-time monitoring, automatic alerts, and seamless audits so you can ensure FSMA, HACCP, and GFSI compliance without extra stress.
Don’t let manual processes slow you down, and benefit from the power of automation. Just like Eurobake. They addressed FoodReady to build out the food safety / HACCP plans for all their products, along with the necessary SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) and essential checklists.
It helped them accelerate their audit processes and pass FDA, GMP, GFSI, and Costco audits with remarkable speed.
We also have a library of editable food safety/HACCP plan templates that can simplify the plan creation process.
If you want to learn more and are ready to start your food safety plan journey, book a demo with us to get started!
Conclusion
A food safety plan is a mandatory requirement for food businesses in the U.S. Most importantly, it demonstrates your proactive approach to preventing food safety hazards and foodborne illnesses. It will also help you protect your reputation and reduce food waste.
You must ensure your plan has essential components, including hazard analysis, preventive controls, corrective actions, monitoring and verification, recall plan, etc. Also, remember to assemble a responsible team, define the product, and create a process flow diagram in advance.
Here you are; your plan is ready, but now your task is updating it. Continuous improvement is crucial; you must change your plan annually or whenever the changes happen.
A food safety plan is complex, but you can handle it, especially if you invest in a food safety software solution like FoodReady. We offer various tools to help you write and manage a food safety plan—contact us to learn more!
FAQs
Overall, all food safety plan components are valuable and play an equal role in its effectiveness.
A food safety plan is required for all food businesses in the U.S.
Food safety plans can be categorized differently based on regulatory requirements and industry standards, such as a HACCP plan, GMP plan, allergen control plan, etc. We can also differentiate between process-based and recipe-based plans.
Process-based food safety plans are best when similar products share the same processes.
Manufacturers working with diverse products with unique ingredients and processing methods will benefit from recipe-based plans.
Inadequate hazard analysis, poor documentation, lack of employee training, failure to update the plan, and neglect of verification procedures are common mistakes. Businesses should also avoid overcomplicating processes or ignoring regulatory requirements, which can cause compliance issues and increased food safety risks.
Businesses can conduct routine audits, employee training assessments, and monitoring procedures. You can also validate your plan through testing, scientific studies, and real-world data analysis.
Failure to maintain a compliant food safety plan can lead to higher food safety risks, operational disruptions, reputational damage, and loss of customer trust. You can also face product recalls, regulatory penalties, and legal liabilities.
