The everyday conditions that make a HACCP plan possible — the general hygiene requirements of Annex II of Regulation (EC) No 852/2004. Get these right and the plan gets shorter.
Read this before you start.
Food Safe Ireland is a private training company. We are not a food authority, we are not part of the State, and nothing you do in a guide is approved or certified by anyone. The programmes you put in place are yours, and running them is your responsibility.
The guides are guidance, not advice, and they are unsupported. We cannot review your documents, complete an application for you, or advise on your particular premises. Everything you need to do it yourself is in the steps — but the doing is yours.
If you want that kind of help it belongs in a paid service rather than a free guide. Email [email protected] and we will tell you what is available.
The European Commission's 2022 notice treats good hygiene practice and HACCP-based procedures as two halves of one food safety management system. Most businesses already do most of this — they just have not written it down.
Every hazard your prerequisites already control is one the plan does not need to make critical. Weak prerequisites produce sprawling plans nobody monitors.
Someone cleans, someone lets the pest contractor in, someone checks deliveries. The gap is that it is not written, so it cannot be shown or handed to a new starter.
Prerequisites are judged on their evidence as much as their content. Cleaning sheets, pest reports, delivery records and training certificates in one findable place.
Sources ·
FSAI — Safe Catering Pack ·
FSAI — Training and online learning
General guidance, not legal advice, and not supported. Your own system, and the officer inspecting your premises, are what govern your business.
Every step closes with a tick-list of what you should actually have. Where the next move is outside the guide, it tells you and links you straight there.
The basic conditions set out in Annex II, and why they come before the plan.
You finish the step holding:
A schedule that names names, with contact times, plus maintenance as a food safety control.
You finish the step holding:
Proofing and housekeeping first, then the contractor, then your own checks between visits.
You finish the step holding:
Approved suppliers, checking food in, and where the waste actually goes.
You finish the step holding:
Hygiene rules written rather than hoped for, fitness to work, and the training record.
You finish the step holding:
A name against every programme, evidence somewhere findable, then the HACCP plan.
You finish the step holding:
No, and the order matters. Prerequisites are the everyday conditions; HACCP controls the specific hazards at specific steps. Doing prerequisites first is what makes the plan small enough to actually follow.
Nothing here says you must have one. Pest control starts with proofing and housekeeping, which a contractor does not do for you. If you use one, keep their reports and close out their recommendations — an unactioned recommendation is written evidence you were told and did nothing.
Not on a free guide — these are unsupported. The Food Safety Record Pack has the sheets ready-made if you would rather not build them, and the FSAI publishes its own free Safe Catering Pack.
The guide stands on its own. These are what people tend to need once they have worked through it — and they are how we make a living, which is why the guide can be free.
Five free guides, all step by step, all yours to work through at your own pace.
Free · 6 steps · work at your own pace.
Guidance only, and unsupported — the doing is yours.