Safe Catering

HACCP means Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points. This is a process that helps you look at how you handle food and introduce procedures to make sure the food you produce is safe to eat.

HACCP involves the following seven steps:

• identify what could go wrong (the hazards)
• identify the most important points where things can go wrong (the critical control points – CCPs)
• set critical limits at each CCP (e.g. cooking temperature/time)
• set up checks at CCPs to prevent problems occurring (monitoring)
• decide what to do if something goes wrong (corrective action)
• prove that your HACCP Plan is working (verification)
• keep records of all of the above (documentation)

Your HACCP plan must be kept up to date. You will need to review it from time to time, especially whenever something in your food operation changes.

You may also wish to ask your local Environmental Health Officer for advice.

Remember that, even with a HACCP plan in place, you must comply with all requirements of current food safety legislation.

The Safe Catering Guide (Issue 4) was updated and re-issued in 2007. It is provided as five pdf files.

PDF files are fully printable documents and are used for downloading and printing large documents from the site. To read them you will need a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader which is available free of charge.

Download Acrobat Reader Software.

Adobe has also produced a plug-in enabling the blind to read PDF documents. It is called Acrobat Access plug-in and can be found on the Adobe website
Download Acrobat Access plug-in

If you have problems opening .pdf documents within your web browser, you can download the files to your own computer.

If you wish to download the file please follow this procedure:

• place your cursor over the link
• click the right hand button of your mouse (PC only)
• select 'save target as' from the drop down menu
• choose a location on your computer to save the file
• Click the 'save' button

You will now be able to open the document in Acrobat Reader on your own computer.

A link to the previous version of the pack (Issue 3) is provided at the bottom of this page. Any person using issue 3 will be able to download the pack and relevant forms from this link.