Understanding Food Safety: An Introduction to HACCP and More

Hello, fellow food safetyists, and welcome to this episode 1 of the food safety podcast. My name is Cameron. I’m the host of this podcast. And in this episode, I’ll be giving a little bit of a rundown about what food safety is, what some of the acronyms are, and maybe talk a little bit about the history of food safety in Australia and whatever else tickles my fancy. So without further ado, let’s get on with it. Now one of the things that you’ll hear is food safety. Now what is food safety? Essentially, what it boils down to it, food safety, is a scientific method or discipline, that focuses on the handling, preparation, and storage of food in ways that, as far as possible, prevent foodborne illnesses.

If everything is followed correctly, then there shouldn’t be any problems with the food. It’s when the there’s a little bit of a breakdown or a, something’s not followed through that, these problems happen. So sort of, you know, recalls with salmonella, e coli, etcetera, etcetera. Now in Australia, it’s a, the food act is governed by the states, and the local councils are the ones that administer it. So they have, food food premises registration, with your local councils, and and go through that process. Now food safety. One of the the first parts of food safety is HACCP, that’s h a c c p. Now what is HACCP? Now the acronyms stand for hazard analysis and critical control points.

The hazard analysis part is that you’re essentially analyzing any hazards in the supply chain from the raw materials to the combining of the raw materials to make the final product, through the packing of the final product, through the storing, through the distribution, the free storing, and sale of that final product. Let’s say, you know, you and the what they call is a critical control point, you will find that there’s some sort of measurement to it. Now we’ve all got fridges and freezers in our house, and we’ve got, various items in the fridges and various items in the freezers.

Now the critical control point for those items is the relevant storage process. And something on that that, whilst I’m starting to it reminded me of it, is that there was something that was put out. I think it was by Dairy Australia or something like that, years years years years years ago. And, hopefully, someone may be able to correct me if I’m a little bit mistaken on it. There was I think it was something put out by Dairy Australia or whatever it was. They were talking about why the milk in the fridge doesn’t last that long. And dairy, whatever the organization was turned around and said that’s because people keep the the milk in the door, and that’s probably the one of the warmest parts of the fridge. Because obviously, when you open the door, the product is exposed, you know, it it has the warmth of that. It’s immediately exposed to the room temperature closed. It’s almost part of the fridge and things like that. So they’ve there was something that was said where they didn’t recommend, storing, milk products in the fridge door.

Now as part of that, one of the questions was, well, why do you make it in products that are shelf suitable? There was a big, thing about that. Now what happened with that? I don’t know because I don’t consume dairy, and I I it was years years years ago. It might have been, you know, 10 or 20 years ago that it was out. But, you know, the the storage of milk, that’s a hassle. Obviously, milk has to be and refrigerated products have to be kept at or below 5 degrees Celsius. For that one, anything frozen needs to be kept at or below minus 18 degrees Celsius, through that whole process.

So, let’s say you’re buying, you know, your your frozen pies or your frozen pizzas or your frozen ice cream for that. Now when it leaves, the manufacturer, that would be one of the critical control points. That’s that it’s below minus 18 degrees. Next critical control point will be that it’s stored in or transported in trucks that are below minus 18 degrees, so that the core temperature of the product doesn’t get too high. So obviously, when it starts getting high, we’ve all had it. We’ve gone home, opened a thing of ice cream, and, you know, part of it shifted, and you go through it, and it’s just like ice. And so that’s obviously because that the ice cream has melted and then re thawed and because it wasn’t blended the way that it is when it comes out of the the production facility, the ice crystals are formed rather than it being a nice what is it? Nice, homogeneous product. But, anyway, that’s a bit of awful there. One thing I do wanna warn you about is I do tend to go on tangents and waffle a bit. So if you don’t like waffles and podcasts as they really are, well, maybe this one isn’t few. Those of you who do decide to stick around for that, welcome, and, as I said, yep. I will waffle little anecdotes stories and things like that. So we’ll talk about that. So, you know, that’s that’s has analysis and and critical draw points. So critical draw points.

Let’s say you’ve got you’re getting biscuits. It’s probably a good chance that biscuits would have gone over or gone through a metal detector, and some even go through x rays depending on what they’re packed in. Now, obviously, the, metal detector is to pick or hopefully detect and reject the product if it has, any metal or metallic, foreign objects in it. And the x-ray would be obviously to pick up something as plastic if there’s the the risk of, plastic or non detectable, foreign objects being in that. Speaking of foreign objects, now a little bit of a history, through food safety. Now I’m pretty sure that maybe a lot of us remember, way back in 2018, there was the big strawberry fiasco, where punnets of strawberries grown in Queensland, and WI were found to be contaminated with sewing noodles.

And it sort of was handled very, very poorly by the, respective government state governments. I think that they, created a whole lot of fear when there wasn’t meant to be fear. But as part of that, I believe that, all fruit products or the the fruit products in particular, have to go through metal detectors now. The the that whole process, you know, same as, if you’re in Victoria, and I might dedicate a an episode, to it later on is the, I Cook Foods thing, where, I cook foods was shut down. Now that’s a bit of a conspiracy surrounding that one as well. And, you know, there’s there’s a huge background, and it was poorly handled. And what happened should never have happened in the 1st place, and things like that. So, you know, there there’s food safety is is relevant everywhere.

If you have a look on the, f sance, f f s a n z website, so it is where’s let me pull it up. Where is it? There we go. Food standards Australia New Zealand. So it is, food standards dot gov.au. I thought it was gonna be fsanz.gov, but probably is so you could get to it that way. That’s the the body that manages food safety and the standards within Australia and New Zealand. If you have a look through faucet through that, you’ll see a lot of the recalls. The last recall was on 9th, but then updated on 10th January. So, bit over a week ago, there’s a whole range of pies that were recalled because there was an undeclared allergen.

The allergy needs egg, so there’s the the possibility that if, someone consumed it who was allergic to egg, that they may have a reaction to it. But if you have a look at FSANZ, there’s there’s recourse for all sorts of different products. Normally, it comes down to an undeclared allergen, which is unfortunate, but that’s a breakdown in the whole process. I mean, where are we now? Obviously, the the pies in January, that was undeclared egg. There was pork jerky, undeclared, due to sesame. There was a Aldi recall for World Kitchen, which had cashews in it. There was some noodles that had, undeclared allergens, milk or eggs, another one that had milk, and things like it’s all, undeclared allergens, which have the, obviously, the the potential to, make people really sick or even worse.

November was a, sorry say ice cream creams that, had, a salmonella contamination. So, you know, it it’s a thing. You know, the food can be recalled, but I’ll talk about food recalls later on and all that sort of stuff. But stepping back a bit, as I said, I do tend to waffle. This is more about the acronyms, for that. So HACCP is there. You’ve got your food safety, and, you know, it’s the thing. Looks after all of that. Where are we? Going back to acronyms. Yes. Let me just go pull up the links there. There’s you know, you so you’ve got HACCP. So CCP is another one. So it’s, it’s a critical control point. You’ll find that, obviously, when your food business or raw material business or food production business gets, certified or registered with the relevant authority, there will be, you know, standards, and they wanna know what the critical control points are and all that sort of stuff as well.

That’s it’s, yeah, critical control points. Most products, as I said, will have the metal detector. Some will have x rays. Others will have the the temperature that the product is stored at. Others will have, different different processes in it. So some of the the acronyms, as I said, there’s SQF, which is, safe quality food. There’s BRC, which is the, British Rail, British Retail Consortium. That’s a different standard. You’ll find codex, which is the part of the codex elementarius commission. You will find out you’ll hear about what is it?

If it’s, you know, something for the international standard, the FAO, which is a food and agriculture organization, obviously, FDA in the US, which is a food and drug, administration, FMI, which is the Food Marketing Institute, they’re the ones that, look after, HACCP. You’ll hear GHP, good handling practices, GMPs, good manufacturing practices. What else is there? RFPs, if you’re looking for something that says request for proposal, RTE, ready to eat, SQF, as I said, safe quality food, SOPs, which are your standard operating practices. You’ve got your PRPs, which is your prerequisite program, and things. So they all form part of the or the the the the PRP forms part of your HACCP, and things like that. So there’s acronyms, FESANSS, which is, as I said before, is a food standards Australia and New Zealand.

You’ll have, you know, depending on who it is, you’ll have DFSV, which is Dairy Food Safe Victoria. Prime Safe are the ones that look after meat products, in the different regulatory areas. What’s another one? Okay. Yep. BRCGS, which is the British Retail Consortium Global Standards. Cool. Country of origin labeling. You’ve got, what else is there? GFSI. So if someone has a GFSI standard, so that’s a global food safety initiative. That’s a group of companies that are part of it to, harmonize and strengthen it. So, your g f I g f s I standards are, VRC, SQF and f s s c 22,000.

So that’s the, food safety systems, ISO 22,000. We’ve got obviously, we’ve gone through has it ISO 22,000 obviously is the, the the international standard with that one. TASIP, which is a threat assessment critical and control point. So that is a, basically a threat assessment. So you’re the prevention of malicious threats to the food. And you’ve got your VASIP, which is your vulnerability assessment critical control point. So that’s basically for, food fraud. One of the big things with food fraud is honey, because honey does, get watered down with with different sugary products.

Another one that I became aware of recently, which I thought was interesting, was olive oil. The Italian governments and, Cabanari, in the in Italy are very, what would you say, stringent on that, depending on, you know, olive oil can be, you know, said to be extra virgin or cold pressed or whatever it is. And then, you know, selling unsuspecting consumers when it’s not actually that could just be a lower grade of it. Now the documentary I was watching on on that, the Italians and the Italian Cabanari Cabaneri, did, take that very seriously, and it was something that they sort of, what would you say, had very little tolerance for.

So what else are we looking at? For that one, something else that you might hear is a 2 hour, 4 hour rule with regards to food safety in Australia. Now this is something that’s put out by Fizans. The 2 hour, 4 hour rule essentially is that, it’s a time that food is kept between 5 degrees and 60 degrees. So if it’s that gap between 5 60 is where there’s increased growth of of passive path pathogens and things like that. So obviously, if it’s kept below 5 degrees, then it’s fine. You can stay whatever, or if it’s a cooked product needs to be kept above 60. So, if if it’s between that 5 60 for less than 2 hours, then what you can do with the food, the food can be sold, use sold, or put back in the fridge to use later. If it’s between 2 and 4 hours, you can use the food or or sell the food, but you can’t put it back into storage. And if it’s been out for more than 4 hours, it can’t be sold. It must be thrown away straight away.

Now the interesting thing about that 5 and 60, the 2 and 4 hour, is that if you’ve got something out, you put it back in the fridge for whatever and then pull it out again, the clock doesn’t reset. It’s cumulative. So if you’ve got something that’s been in and out of that time throughout the day or even the the 2 days, you know, by once it’s reached those 4 hours, then you have to discard it. That’s the same things on, you know, if the food’s on display, etcetera, etcetera. So, yeah, it it it’s the thing. You know, you’ve gotta be aware of it because if it gets too warm or the, you know, the cold food gets too warm or the warm food gets too cold, then it can be bad for for the consumer, especially if they’re a a vulnerable, like, pregnant women, the elderly, those who are immuno immunocompromised, or young children or babies. So it can be potentially dangerous for them, for things like that. So, Fazance has a couple of different fact sheets and things like that, for that one. So yeah. So, what else is there? Oh, something I did mention, in the previous episode that I thought I would touch on and, you know, make mention of in this one. So that’s a failing food report put out by the department of agriculture, fisheries, and forestry.

What they do is, every month, they do a failing food report. That’s food that’s been inspected in, and tested. It’s imported foods under the imported food inspection scheme. The foods that they taste depend on whether the food is a risk food or a surveillance food. The, food that is on this food, food file reports is food that’s being tested and found to be found to file the test. It doesn’t include food that has filed the test due to a labeling error because that’s just something that is, you know, something that can be easily fixed, but the failed food. So if we have a look at that, pull it up. We’ll have a look at November.

This is, when was this put out? So this is November’s report that covers food that was in late October and early November or or through November. The table, it lists the, non con non compliant food that deaf have detected. So if you have a look, 23rd October, some tahini from Lebanon, salmonella was detected, detecting a 125 grams. 1st November was dye dried sliced seaweed, that had an excess of iodine. Now iodine will be probably particular one from those who are old enough to remember it when was recalled because it had an excess of iodine in it, due to the change in their process.

November again, whole cooked bronze from Vietnam. It had a fibrochloria. I hope you pronounce that one. Kelp from China. Obviously, iodine again. Mixed fruit jam from India. It had, vitamin a, b 6, b 7, and zinc, which were not permitted in that food. Maison soy protein, cereals from Nigeria. B 5 was not permitted in that food. Guava bites from India. It had, an additive that was not put permitted in the food. So that’s e 127. Dried herring. Histamine was detected in excess levels. Chili powder from India in no 11th November had salmonella. Frozen lime lime leaves from Thailand had a hexaerohexaerohexaerohexaerohexaerohexaerohexaerohexaerohexaerohexaerohexaerohexaerohexaerohex Frozen lime leaves had that hexa thingy again.

Chili powder had salmonella. Cassava chips had a hydrocyanic acid, in excess of detect permitted levels. Mouth freshness from India’s had a 127 again, which was not permitted, and things like that. So I won’t bore anyone everyone. We’re going through the whole list. But if you have a look through it, it does say that, you know, what the problems are and why it’s rejected. So for example, dried tofu, it was rejected because it had vitamin c, and vitamin c was not permitted in that food. There’s a Gorgonzola doppcheese from Italy that had a listeria monocytogenes, detected in it, all sorts of stuff. So it’s, yeah, it’s one of those interesting things. So these are the only ones that that, DAF have detected and, you know, detected it, so they’ll be continually monitored and things like that.

I know, where is one of the the food manufacturing companies that I work for with, had onions imported, and that had come out every once in a while and inspect a random container, just just to make sure that it is the onion and there’s nothing wrong with the onion. They do it with, curd from, depending on what country the curd comes from and things like that. So it’s, yeah, it’s one of those things. What’s your thoughts on them doing it up? I’ll leave that up to you, but, you know, it’s it’s a lot of stuff that so, yeah, stuff that comes into the country that that shouldn’t be in the foods and that, Fazance haven’t said that, hey. That that that should be in the food. One of the other things that Phazance does is, puts out public consultations where they ask the public for their thoughts on comments on things going into foods.

That is where we’re looking at. Consumer information. Right down the bottom. Nope. Not right down the bottom. A little bit further. Public consultations. There we go. What we do, you go to the consultation hub. So have a look at the consultation hub, which is consultations.foodstandards.gov.au. They’re looking for a whole lot of big words from another lot of big words as a processing aid. They’re looking at something from Shiitake mushrooms as a processing aid. Milk fat globule membrane as intrusionship substance in infant formula products, food derived from an insect protected soybean line.

Where are they? So there’s all these things that you can check out and get involved in. So if you are able to, I would head on over to the food standards website, subscribe to their mailing lists, and and you’ll get an email notification as long as as well as, any recalls and things like that. What else was gonna cover in this episode? I don’t know. Perhaps, would you like me to cover? I’m going to in a bit more detail in in a later episode. So I I think dedicate a a full episode to that and then as well as the, BRC, and all that sort of stuff as as well, and then and it’s, process from that. I’ll dedicate sort of their own episodes to that. So, anyway, I I think I might end this one here now, and we’ll talk about something else in the next episode, which I don’t know because, a week can be a long time here food safety.

And, we’ll see what, tickles my fancy on that one. If you’ve got any thoughts or ideas on what you’d like me to cover into in future episodes, please send an email to notes at food safety dot ist. I will include a link to that, in the show notes, or head over to food safety dot istforward/comment, for that. So, anyway, once again, I think I might end it now. So thank you for listening, and I hope you, join me on the next episode of the Food Safety Podcast. Until then, bye for now.