Do you need a HACCP consultant?

The short answer

Hire a consultant or a process authority when your product goes beyond what the Food Code spells out, when you sell to other businesses, or when you want someone else to own the whole job. Build it yourself, with or without ClearHACCP, when you run a common special process in your own restaurant and the Food Code gives the limits.

When a consultant is the right call

• You sell packaged food to other businesses. That is wholesale food processing, often under a different agency and different rules. We do not build those plans.
• Your health department asks for a process authority or lab data. For example a new acidified product, a shelf-stable product, or anything outside the Food Code's tables.
• Dry fermented sausage, room-temperature dry-cured ham, sprouting, or juice. These need specialist review. Our free checker marks them as out of scope.
• Cooking below the Food Code charts. A low-temperature variance needs scientific data under 3-401.11(D)(4). A food safety expert should be involved.
• You want it done for you, including site visits and staff training.

FDA Food Code 2022, 8-103.11(B)

An analysis of the rationale for how the potential public health HAZARDS and nuisances addressed by the relevant Code sections will be alternatively addressed by the proposal;

When you can build it yourself

Sous vide and cook-chill, vacuum packing with a second barrier, frozen fish in reduced oxygen packaging, cheese, acidified sushi rice, and curing or smoking in a restaurant all have their rules written in the Food Code. Your job is to apply them to your menu, your equipment and your team, and to keep the logs.

That is what ClearHACCP does: about 15 questions, every answer checked against the Food Code as you go, a person reviewing anything unusual, and a plan whose cover, contents and first sections you read before you pay $249 once. If your inspector asks for changes, we make them free for 12 months.

Questions to ask a consultant

1. Is the price fixed, and what does it include?
2. Are revisions after my health department's comments included, and for how long?
3. Which Food Code edition will you use, and will every limit show its section?
4. Do you provide the logs and train my staff on them?
5. Have you had plans for this process accepted in my county?

Frequently asked questions

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