What is TACCP?
A TACCP (Threat Assessment Critical Control Points) is a management process with the goal of preventing malicious and intentional product contamination in the food industry. The process helps to proactively identify and manage control points in the supply chain that are susceptible to tampering.
You might be wondering, why would anyone contaminate food with the intention to do harm? Sadly, the reason why TACCP is practiced today is that someone has tried and succeeded. Hopefully, any attempts to alter food products are few and far between, but it’s still important that businesses handling any ingestable merchandise do their due diligence with a threat assessment.
Is it common that food products are deliberately contaminated? No. But having a procedure in place for such unlikely circumstances also plays a role in why they don’t happen. It’s the same reason why people stop at a red light with no traffic in sight—because they might get caught by the police and suffer from the consequences. It’s the same premise only, this time, instead of following traffic laws, the food industry is following the TACCP guidelines to ensure food safety.
In this article the following topics are briefly discussed:
1. Possible risk within the framework of TACCP
2. Successfully implementing your TACCP risk assessment template
3. A digital tool that can help with the implementation of a TACCP template
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What are Possible Threats Under TACCP?
Although most people would never consider hurting another human being, that doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who wouldn’t, and we all must remain vigilant of those who would do us harm. Most people have heard of the Chicago Tylenol murders when a total of eleven people died in 1982 when the victims unsuspectingly ingested potassium cyanide in the form of a seemingly harmless Tylenol capsule. Many more died when the highly publicized murders inspired copycats to lace more pharmaceutical products with toxic substances. The perpetrators are still at large to this day.
The Chicago Tylenol murders are just one of the reasons why the food and packaging industry had to get innovative with packaging designs. Have you ever wondered why pill bottles marketed as childproof seem to also include the adult demographic? Sometimes the package designs are secured to the point where it seems impossible that anyone would be able to open it for consumption let alone tampering. But there are many more threats that can harm consumers and business through contaminated food:
- Exposure of food production to allergens such as peanuts.
- Contamination of products with needles or other physical impurities.
- Causing an outbreak of Salmonella through contaminated self-service food products is dangerous for consumers and costly for companies if not acted upon immediately.
How is a TACCP Risk Assessment Template Successfully Implemented?
Companies can counteract these risks by proactively addressing threats and knowing where in the food supply chain exists the highest risk of deliberate contamination. To implement a TACCP template, companies must meet the following requirements:
1. Create a Plan
Your plan should consist of a multidisciplinary team with members from recruitment, security, management, etc. It will be vital that these sectors work together to draw up a TACCP template.
2. Identify the Control Points
Control points must be identified in the food supply chain where threats to personnel, operations, and products are possible.
3. Perform Evaluations
An assessment of the critical points must be carried out to identify risks. What precautionary measures can be taken to minimize potential risks?
4. Analyse Risks
Analyze risks and implement appropriate threat controls to continue monitoring checkpoints.
5. Create an Action Plan
Establish an action plan at an early stage to avoid control breaches. This also includes regular employee training.
6. Continuously Improve Processes
Keep improving the TACCP processes by reviewing documentation and monitoring new threats. Preventive measures must be specifically defined and continuously monitored at regular intervals.
Maintaining an effective TACCP system requires continuous documentation and active tracking of critical points to ensure that threats are identified early. However, the reliance on paper records and manual documentation can be an obstacle in the effective implementation of TACCP. Spending a lot of time manually recording data and reviewing paper documentation is counterproductive to building an effective food defense system.
Lumiform, the powerful app for audits, helps to quickly and efficiently implement a paperless and effective TACCP process in your company. The mobile solution enables you to immediately react to threats identified during the assessment. All completed TACCP reports are automatically stored online and can be immediately shared with the entire team.
Advantages:
- Generate real-time data via internal processes. This makes quality and security measurable, and you can use the data to continuously optimize processes.
- Get an overview of everything that's going on on-site.
- Reports are created automatically - this saves you time spent on postprocessing.
- Increase the efficiency of your internal processes: Through more efficient communication within the team, third parties, and management, as well as faster incident reporting, you can solve incidents up to 4x faster than ever before.
- Save time by analyzing all data more easily and identifying areas that need your attention more quickly.
- Continuous improvement of quality and safety: With the flexible checklist construction kit, you can constantly optimize internal tests and processes. Since Lumiform guides the examiner through the exam, no training is required.
- The very simple operation offers no margin for error for inspectors on site. The app offers an easier solution to documenting or filling out checklists than tedious paper or Excel sheets.
