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

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.