Quality management and safety of food in HACCP system aspect

Abstract The practical implementation of hazard analysis and critical control point (HACCP) and in particular the definition of the critical control points (CCPs) in the food industry is usually a complex structured task. This is particularly the case of food enterprise, where quality/safety manager ability, knowledge of the production processes and ‘‘sensitiveness’’ is usually the discriminate for the proper identification and prioritization of risks. The same applies for the definition of causes which may lead to food safety hazards. This paper addresses the issues of how quality/safety managers can objectively and automatically implement the HACCP principles of hazard analysis in the application of HACCP, which is the identification of risk priorities and of the related CCPs. The proposed methodology combines decision tree analysis approach for the analytical decomposition of the relevant steps in the manufacturing process of ice cream.