Verification of CCPs

So, are you telling the truth?

Is your production team doing what it says?  Are you sure?

Wanna know how to be sure?  It's through verification!

First, an easy way to remember the difference between verification and validation.  Verification comes from the latin root vera meaning truth.  Ergo (ha! more latin) verification is the HACCP step where you determine if you are telling the truth about your HACCP plan.  Validation asks if what you are doing is useful to control hazards.

Verification has 3 components:

• your CCPs are being followed
• the whole HACCP is in place and being followed
• regulatory verification

Verifying can be done many ways.  In meat production, a pre-shipment review is a regulated verification step.  In other types of production, any step where you review your logs and sign off that you have reviewed them, is a verification.  Audits are another good way of verifying work.  Finally, having the regulators pay you a visit and give you their findings is a way of verifying.

Some good ways to verify:

• Review your monitoring records.  You are spending ages recording everything, take a look at it, make sure you are recording correctly.  Review at a frequency that makes sense.  Don't review your cleaning step once a quarter only to find out that your concentrations of cleaner is WAY off.  Imagine THAT recall.
• Calibrate!  Got a thermometer?  Is it working?  You sure?  Fill a container with ice water, stick the thermometer in.  Make sure the thermometer is reading 32F.  If you don't remember why this works, consult your high school chemistry notes.
• Grab your accountant, promise you will take her out to lunch if she'll spend some time looking at your workers work.  Put her in a lab coat and have her watch one part of your production process.  Don't worry, the workers will do it right for about 3 minutes, and then, they'll do it how they always have done it.  Over lunch, talk to your accountant and figure out what's working and what isn't.
• Get some lab samples done.  Finished product testing is ok, but non-specific and expensive.  Test something specific, like your injector, or swab a food contact surface in your processing room.  If it turns up positive...

Call me, I'll help.  Dirigo Quality Meats can help with straightening out all sorts of processing problems.  908-907-7798