Article 5 of Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 requires food business operators to put in place, implement and maintain permanent procedures based on HACCP principles. This is a free walkthrough of writing them yourself.
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 plan you produce is yours. We do not write it, review it or approve it.
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 commonest finding is a generic folder somebody bought and never opened. A plan has to describe your kitchen, because that is the only kitchen it will ever be checked against.
Two kitchens making the same dish can have different critical control points, because the layout, the equipment and the people differ. That is the whole point of the exercise.
Sprawling plans full of control points nobody can monitor end up monitored not at all. Strong prerequisites make the plan smaller, and a smaller plan gets followed.
A plan with no named owner stops being maintained the week it is written. The guide makes you name one, and a deputy.
Sources ·
FSAI — Temperature control ·
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.
What a HACCP plan actually is, why prerequisites come first, and who owns it.
You finish the step holding:
Your products, who eats them, and a process flow walked rather than imagined.
You finish the step holding:
Analyse the hazards against each step, then separate a genuine CCP from good practice.
You finish the step holding:
A number and a method for every CCP, and a monitoring routine a real shift can sustain.
You finish the step holding:
Corrective actions decided in advance, and verification that the system works at all.
You finish the step holding:
The sheets that follow from your plan, where they live and how long you keep them.
You finish the step holding:
Training, putting it where the work happens, and a first review date.
You finish the step holding:
You get the plan you wrote. The guide is a walkthrough, not a document service — there is no template that comes out at the end with your name on it, because a plan that describes somebody else's kitchen is the exact failure we are trying to prevent.
No. This is a free guide to writing the plan. The training is separate: HACCP Level 3 is the management-level course for people who develop and maintain the procedures, and Annex II Chapter XII expects them to have had adequate training in applying HACCP principles.
Not on a free guide. These are unsupported and that includes reviewing documents. Email [email protected] if you want to know what paid help exists.
It makes the plan much shorter. Every hazard your prerequisites already control is a hazard the plan does not need to make critical. There is a free guide to those too.
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 · 7 steps · work at your own pace.
Guidance only, and unsupported — the doing is yours.