Content area
Full Text
1. Introduction
Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 lays down general rules for food business operators on the hygiene of foodstuffs to ensure a high level of consumer protection with regard to food safety. According to Article 3 of the Regulation, food business operators shall ensure that all stages of production, processing and distribution of food under their control satisfy the necessary hygiene requirements (Regulation Council, 2004). For this reason, all food safety management system (FSMS) standards require effective control measures to minimize the risk of food contamination.
According to ISO 22000 (2005), a control measure is defined as an action or an activity that can be used to prevent or eliminate a food safety hazard or reduce it to an acceptable level. This definition is general and can be used to describe virtually any action, step, activity, job, task, process or procedure which has the intention of addressing a food safety hazard. ISO 22000 recognizes three categories of management of control measures according to their nature, direct relationship with the process and the level of risk to the consumer should the control measure fail: Prerequisite Programs (PRPs), Operational Prerequisite Programs (oPRPs) and Critical Control Points (CCPs). Similarly, other food safety standards such as the British Retail Consortium (BRC) global standard for food safety (BRC, 2011) and the International Featured Standards (IFS) food standard for auditing quality and food safety of food products (IFS, 2012) use similar terminology for the definition of control measures.
PRPs are defined in the ISO 22000 as the basic conditions and activities that are necessary to maintain a hygienic environment throughout the food chain suitable for the production, handling and provision of safe end products and safe food for human consumption. Similarly, BRC defines PRPs as the necessary environmental and operational programs to create an environment suitable to produce safe and legal food products. Depending on the sectors PRPs can be described in: Good Agricultural Practice (GAP), Good Veterinarian Practice (GVP), Good manufacturing Practice (GMP), Good Hygienic Practice (GHP), Good Production Practice (GPP), Good Distribution Practice (GDP) and Good Trading Practice (GTP).
An oPRP is defined by the ISO 22000 as a PRP, identified by the hazard analysis as essential in order to control the likelihood of introducing food safety hazards to...