The phrase "Critical Control Point" appears in every Irish HACCP plan, but ask three chefs to list their CCPs and you will often get three different answers. This article gives you 12 worked examples - each with a recognised limit, a monitoring method and a corrective action - drawn from kitchens across Dublin, Cork, Galway and Limerick.
What turns a step into a CCP
A step is a CCP only when control at that step is the last realistic chance to remove or reduce a hazard to an acceptable level. If a later step does the job, the earlier one is a Control Point (CP), not a CCP. Distinguishing the two is the heart of a defensible HACCP hazard analysis.
1. Cooking poultry
Hazard: Salmonella, Campylobacter. Limit: 75°C for 30 seconds at the thickest point. Monitor: calibrated probe in every batch. Corrective action: continue cooking until limit reached.
2. Cooking minced beef and burgers
Hazard: E. coli O157. Limit: 70°C for 2 minutes (or equivalent time/temperature combination). Monitor: probe at thickest point of every batch. Corrective action: return to grill or oven.
3. Hot holding for service
Hazard: Bacterial growth above 5°C and below 63°C. Limit: 63°C minimum. Monitor: probe every 2 hours, log on hot-hold sheet. Corrective action: reheat to 75°C or discard.
4. Cold storage
Hazard: Listeria, Salmonella growth. Limit: 5°C or below for ready-to-eat foods. Monitor: twice-daily fridge log, weekly probe verification. Corrective action: assess time at temperature; for prolonged breach, dispose.
5. Cooling cooked food
Hazard: Spore-forming bacteria (Clostridium perfringens, Bacillus cereus). Limit: 60°C to 10°C in under 2 hours, then to 5°C within 4 hours. Monitor: probe and time on cooling log. Corrective action: blast-chill, divide into smaller portions or discard.
6. Reheating
Hazard: Surviving pathogens. Limit: 75°C core temperature. Monitor: probe each batch. Corrective action: continue reheating; never reheat twice.
7. Sous-vide cooking
Hazard: Listeria, Clostridium. Limit: validated time-temperature combination (e.g. 60°C for 45 minutes for chicken breast). Monitor: water-bath probe + bag core probe. Corrective action: extend cook time; if process failure, reject batch.
8. Allergen separation
Hazard: Cross-contact for the 14 EU-listed allergens (EU 1169/2011). Limit: physical or temporal separation - no shared utensils without dedicated wash. Monitor: visual check, allergen matrix on noticeboard. Corrective action: stop service, deep-clean, re-prep.
9. Receiving raw materials
Hazard: Out-of-temperature deliveries. Limit: chilled goods at 5°C or below; frozen at -18°C or below. Monitor: probe one product per delivery. Corrective action: reject delivery and notify supplier in writing.
10. Fryer oil temperature
Hazard: Acrylamide formation; under-cooking. Limit: oil 175-180°C; product probe 75°C. Monitor: built-in fryer dial verified weekly with calibration probe. Corrective action: service fryer; test product core.
11. Vacuum packing for retail
Hazard: Anaerobic pathogen growth. Limit: seal integrity 100%; chilled storage 3°C; defined shelf life. Monitor: visual seal check; chiller log. Corrective action: reject seal-failures; relocate.
12. Final visual / metal-detector inspection
Hazard: Foreign body. Limit: zero contamination above the agreed sensitivity. Monitor: automatic reject + reject log. Corrective action: rework batch back through detector.
Make your CCP list defensible
For every CCP in your HACCP plan, write the four lines above on a single A4 sheet, post it at the workstation and train every food handler. The cleanest way to do this at scale is a short HACCP online course with instant certificate output - it gives every member of staff the same baseline and lands proof in your records folder the same day.
