HACCP Assessment of Virginia Meat and Poultry Processing Plants

Abstract

Fifty-eight meat and poultry plants in Virginia were assessed during spring and summer of 2000. These assessments were all conducted in the presence of state inspection and were designed to be non-regulatory. The audit team included N.G. Marriott, M.A. Tolbert and B.P. Quinn. The audits consisted of a tour of the facility and a review of SSOPs and all HACCP related documentation. To assist in these audits, a HACCP check sheet was developed and utilized to indicate suggestions or deficiencies. Most of the plants had an understanding of how to implement HACCP properly. The majority of the suggestions that were noted were not so much about the HACCP concept, but more with regards to the legality of a HACCP document. The most noted deficiency was improper cross-outs. If there is a correction, one line should be drawn through the error and then must be initialed. With respect to the HACCP plan, most deficiencies were related to the hazards and the critical control points.

During these audits, two microbial determination methods (Standard Plate Count and Bioluminescence) were used to evaluate processing equipment. Typically, three pieces of equipment were tested at each plant. When the data were collected, the two microbial determination methods were correlated. The "corr" function in SAS resulted in a correlation coefficient of .4478, which is low and indicates a poor correlation. A pass/fail method similar to one done by Illsley et. al. resulted in a 48.9% agreement between the methods in this research.