Critical control point (CCP), Food Safety Glossary

A step in a food process where control is essential to prevent, eliminate or reduce a food safety hazard to an acceptable level. A critical control point (CCP) is one of the core concepts of HACCP. It is a step in a food handling process at which a control measure can be applied and is essential to prevent or eliminate a food safety hazard, or reduce it to an acceptable level. Common examples include cooking, cooling, chilled storage and, in manufacturing, pasteurisation or metal detection. Not every step in a process is a CCP. A step only becomes a CCP if losing control there would allow a hazard to reach the consumer and there is no later step to bring it back under control. HACCP uses a structured hazard analysis, often with a decision tree, to identify which steps are genuinely critical, so that monitoring effort is focused where it matters most. In a typical Australian cafe or restaurant, the steps most often identified as CCPs are cooking to a safe core temperature, cooling cooked food quickly, hot holding above 60 degrees Celsius and cold holding at or below 5 degrees Celsius. These are the points where getting it wrong is most likely to make food unsafe. Each CCP needs a defined critical limit, a way to monitor it, a corrective action if it fails and a record. A food safety program under Standard 3.2.1, or the substantiation records expected under Standard 3.2.2A, will typically be built around the CCPs a business has identified for its menu and processes. A Melbourne pub identifies cooking chicken schnitzels as a CCP. Staff probe a schnitzel from each batch to confirm the core reaches at least 75 degrees Celsius before service, and log the reading, so any undercooked batch is caught before it reaches a customer.