Although HACCP was originally conceived to ensure food
safety, there are other recognized benefits related to the use of the system,
such as reduction in losses during food production. Better trained employees
and monitored procedures are responsible for this benefit, because the
systematic monitoring of some steps of the process leads to immediate responses
when critical limits are exceeded, in a way that hazards are controlled without
delay, preventing errors and losses during the process. Therefore, fewer
failures in the process lead to fewer noncompliant products, that is, fewer
products that are rejected and discarded. By the lack of strict control of the
process, as proposed in the HACCP system, errors are only identified in the
finished product, making reprocessing impossible most of the times, and leading
to even greater losses.
Discard of finished product implies added costs for the
company and for the environment, mostly related to the necessary treatment of
the material before it is discarded, such as the use of energy, water, and
chemical products, as well as the cost of the discard process per sector. For
example, residual waters of food industries, such as dairy or meat plants
contain blood, fat, meat residues, whey and amounts of milk, cheese, yogurt,
dairy drinks, and butter. Treatment of these residues involves large amounts of
water and produces large volumes of effluent that still have high
concentrations of organic material and should be adequately treated before
being disposed of into natural water bodies. Therefore, HACCP contributes to
the reduction of losses in all steps of the process, and has a positive impact
on environment conservation.
Many of the raw materials delivered to the food industry come directly
from primary production (i.e., from farms), where the levels of contamination,
mainly chemical contamination, may pose serious risks to the health of the
consumer, especially in developing countries. Thus, this CCP requires critical
limits for the presence of chemical contaminants, ensuring quality control of
raw material, and leading to greater environmental awareness and responsibility
of the suppliers, by means of controlled and rational use of pesticides and
drugs of veterinary use. In this, HACCP contributes to enhance the responsibility
of the industries in relation to food safety and quality, and environmental
protection.
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