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Friday, August 20, 2010

HACCP - HAZARD ANALYSIS CRITICAL CONTROL POINT

HACCP is the methodical preventive approach to food safety that addresses physical, chemical and biological hazards as a means of prevention rather than finished product inspection. This approach has major benefits to organizations operating within the food supply chain as it enables them to decide key controls over processes and focus resources on activities that are dangerous to ensuring safe food. Retailers,food industry and Government in particular are concerned about ensuring that food is produced safely and that the consumer has confidence in the product. This has led to an increase in legislation over time that has focused upon ensuring safe systems of food production.

HACCP has great importance which it comes to food safety. First of all, it improves food safety. It also increases business awareness of food risks. As Seawork is the best worldwide hake products manufacturer, having the HACCP certificate increases our buyer and consumer's confidence regarding our hake products (frozen hake fillet, hake fillets,hake fillet skin-on, etc...) and also reduces the risk of negative publicity.

The HACCP certificate is built upon other programs such as Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) which are built into our food safety system. Our HACCP system undergoes a bi-annual audit from SABS (South African Bureau of Standardization, Cape Town) to ensure that the company conforms to the necessary criteria. A certificate on compliance, valid for the next six months is issued.

Our HACCP system assists us to comply with legislation and to fulfill customer requirements as well as supporting due diligence.

We focus mainly on quality which starts on board our vessels and is monitored right up to the end of a finished product. Since all of our processing is done by hand we ensure the best possible results on our products.

Furthermore our quality department has been audited and certified by an EU-sent commission to prove its conformity with EU-Standards regarding importing regulations and legislature.

We do our best in order to always be ahead and up to date with international quality standards, legislation and regulations.