Critical Control Points (CCPs) are essential to any food safety management system. Identifying, monitoring and controlling CCPs can make the difference between a safe, compliant product and a serious food safety breach. Whether you’re preparing for BRCGS certification, working towards SALSA approval or strengthening your HACCP plan, understanding CCPs is fundamental.
This blog breaks down the most common types of CCPs, explains their role in food production, and shows how to manage them effectively.
What Is a Critical Control Point (CCP)?
A CCP is a point in a food manufacturing/producing/storing/distributing process where a control can be applied to prevent, eliminate or mitigate a food safety hazard to an acceptable level. These hazards might be biological (e.g. pathogens), chemical (e.g. cleaning product residues), or physical (e.g. glass or metal fragments).
Identifying correct CCPs is a legal requirement under English food safety law and a key part of HACCP design.
Common Types of CCPs in Food Production
1. Cooking (Thermal Processing)
- Why it matters: Undercooking food can leave dangerous bacteria such as Salmonella or E. coli in the final product.
- Examples of hazards: Raw poultry, ready meals, sauces, and meat products.
- What can go wrong: Inconsistent cooking temperatures, equipment failure, inaccurate probe readings, or lack of calibration.
- How Food Safety Assist helps: We work with businesses to validate their thermal processing steps, train staff on correct probing techniques, and establish clear monitoring systems aligned to BRCGS or SALSA standards.
2. Metal Detection
- Why it matters: Metal fragments can enter food through processing equipment or packaging faults, presenting serious safety risks.
- Examples of hazards: Baked goods, ready meals, meats.
- What can go wrong: Metal detectors which are not correctly calibrated, irregular checks, avoiding the detection stage, or false positives ignored.
- Control measures: Routine testing with ferrous/non-ferrous test pieces – clear actions for detecting metal contamination – records of all checks and results
- How Food Safety Assist helps: We can help businesses set up robust metal detection systems and procedures which meet the expectations of UK retailers and food standard organisations.
3. Allergen Control (Cleaning Verification)
- Why it matters: “Free from” claims, such as, gluten-free, nut-free, or dairy-free are not just marketing labels; they are safety promises. For consumers with allergies or intolerances, even trace amounts of allergens can cause serious health reactions. That’s why verifying the effectiveness of cleaning systems is critical. It’s not enough to clean, we must prove that cleaning has removed allergenic residues to safe levels.
Examples of hazards
- Residual gluten on shared equipment used for gluten-free products
- Milk proteins remaining on surfaces used for dairy-free production
- Nut particles contaminating “nut-free” lines due to airborne spread or poor changeover procedures
These hazards can lead to allergic reactions, product recalls, and loss of consumer trust.
- What can go wrong:
- Cleaning procedures that are not validated for allergen removal
- Visual inspection used as the sole verification method
- Inconsistent swabbing or lack of allergen-specific testing
- Documentation gaps that prevent traceability or accountability
- Staff unaware of the critical importance of allergen control
- Control measures:
- Develop and implement validated cleaning protocols tailored to each allergen
- Use rapid allergen detection kits or protein swabs to verify cleaning effectiveness
- Conduct routine verification after cleaning and before “free from” production begins
- Maintain detailed records of cleaning, verification results, and corrective actions
- Provide ongoing training to ensure staff understand the risks and procedures
- Consider dedicated equipment or segregated areas for high-risk allergens
- How Food Safety Assist helps: We support food businesses in writing allergen risk assessments, training staff and validating cleaning regimes to ensure safety and compliance.
pH Control (Acidification)
- Why it matters: Controlling pH is a key defence against microbial hazards in food production. By lowering the pH to safe levels, we create an environment where harmful bacteria like Clostridium botulinum and Listeria monocytogenes cannot grow. This is especially important in acidified foods such as sauces, pickles, and fermented products. In the UK, pH control is a recognised CCP under HACCP, helping ensure food safety and regulatory compliance.
Examples of hazards
- Clostridium botulinum in low-acid canned foods
- Listeria monocytogenes in chilled acidified products
- Salmonella in improperly acidified sauces or dressings
- What can go wrong: Inaccurate pH measurement due to uncalibrated equipment, incomplete acidification during processing, pH drifting above the critical limit (typically pH 4.6), allowing pathogens to survive and multiply, poor documentation or missed monitoring steps.
- Control measures: Use calibrated pH meters or validated test strips, monitor pH at defined stages of production, set a critical limit (e.g. pH ≤ 4.6) based on product risk, take corrective action if pH is too high, such as reprocessing or holding the batch, and verify through equipment calibration and record reviews.
- How Food Safety Assist helps: We can help you identify whether pH or thermal control should be a CCP and assist with validation, equipment checks and training.
How to Identify and Manage CCPs in Your Business
Experienced businesses, surprisingly, can often struggle with correctly identifying CCPs. Yet, some mistakenly over-classify every control as “critical”, while others miss key CCPs entirely.
Tips for success:
- Follow Codex-based decision trees to determine CCPs
- Validate each CCP to prove control effectiveness
- Train your HACCP team in correct identification and monitoring methods
Remember: It’s not enough to say you have CCPs, you need to prove they are controlled.
The Role of HACCP, BRCGS and SALSA
English food law (Food Safety Act 1990 and Food Standards Act 1999) requires food businesses to operate a documented food safety management system based on HACCP principles. Both BRCGS and SALSA go further, requiring clear justification of all CCPs, evidence of validation and monitoring, and demonstration of corrective action and review processes.
Food Safety Assist works with clients across England to meet and exceed these requirements, whether for their first audit or ongoing compliance support.
Final Thoughts
Understanding and managing Critical Control Points is at the heart of safe food production. Get it right, and you reduce risk, improve audit outcomes and protect your customers. Get it wrong and you could face enforcement, product recalls or reputational damage.
If you’re not confident your CCPs are correct, or you’re preparing for BRCGS or SALSA, we’re here to help.
Need help identifying CCPs?
Contact Food Safety Assist today for practical, expert support with your HACCP plan and compliance.
