Food safety is a global concern. Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) is an international standard defining the requirements of a safe food management system. The HACCP system helps organizations focus on the hazards that affect food safety/food hygiene and the systematic identification, setting and implementation of critical control points during the food production process. HACCP is built around seven principles:

1. Analyze hazards
Potential hazards associated with a food and measures to control those hazards are identified. The hazard could be biological, such as a microbe; chemical, such as a toxin; or physical, such as glass or metal fragments.

2. Identify critical control points
These are points in a food production cycle-from its raw state through processing and shipping to consumption by the consumer-at which the potential hazard has to be controlled or eliminated. Examples are cooking, cooling, packaging, and metal detection.

3. Establish preventive measures with critical limits for each control point
For a cooked food, for example, this might include setting the minimum cooking temperature and time required to ensure the elimination of any harmful microbes.

4. Establish procedures to monitor the critical control points
Such procedures might include determining how and by whom cooking time and temperature should be monitored.

5. Establish corrective actions to be taken when monitoring shows that a critical limit has not been met
For example, reprocessing or disposing of food if the minimum cooking temperature is not met.

6. Establish procedures to verify that the system is working properly
For example, testing time-and-temperature recording devices to verify that a cooking unit is working properly or sending food for microbiological testing.

7. Establish effective recordkeeping to document the HACCP system
This would include records of hazards and their control methods, the monitoring of safety requirements and action taken to correct potential problems. Each of these principles must be backed by sound scientific knowledge: for example, published microbiological studies on time and temperature factors for controlling foodborne pathogens.