Assessment of current procedures for animal food production chains and critical control points regarding their safety and quality: preliminary results from the Organic HACCP-project

Summary

Introduction:
Within the 5th EU-framework project “Recommendations for improved procedures for securing
consumer oriented food safety and quality of certified organic foods from plough to plate“(QLRT-2002-02245; “Organic HACCP”), a systematic analysis was carried out among
selected certified organic food production chains, such as eggs and milk but also wheat bread,cabbage, tomatoes, apples and wine, to investigate current procedures of production
management and quality assurance. For each of seven quality and safety criteria, such as
microbial toxins and abiotic contaminants, potential pathogens, natural plant toxicants,
freshness and taste, nutrient content and food additives, fraud as well as social and ethical aspects the information was analysed to identify Critical Control Points (CCPs) and to suggest ways how the control of quality and safety can be further improved. CCPs were defined as the steps in supply chains where the qualities of the final product can be controlled most efficiently.
The project had the following overall objectives:
i) to provide an overview of consumer concerns in terms of organic food in different
European regions, and a conceptual framework for setting future research in
perspective;
ii) to establish a database of existing procedures and relevant control points for
selected organic food production chains, prepared for extension with additional
commodity groups and updated procedures;
iii) to provide systematic analyses of each selected commodity chain using procedures
developed for Hazard Analysis by Critical Control Points (HACCP), for each of
seven aspects of safety and/or quality; and
iv) to produce and disseminate information material with recommendations for
improvements of procedures and control, to the stakeholders involved, and to
define the most important research needs on subjects where current knowledge
does not yield a sufficiently firm basis for practical recommendations, and
disseminate this information to researchers and research policy makers.
The new aspect within the Organic HACCP project was thus to improve how consumer
concerns are addressed, through the use of the CCP concept for a wide range of criteria, not only safety.