Impact of HACCP Based Food Safety Management Systems in Improving Food Safety of Sri Lankan Tea Industry

Abstract

A study was conducted to identify and assess the major food safety violations in low grown orthodox black tea manufacturing process while assessing impact of HACCP based food safety management system (FSMS) in tea industry. Stratified random sampling was used where qualitative data was weighted averaged against GMP requirements and converted in to quantitative values to be used in statistical analyses. The impact of HACCP based FSMS in improving food safety was evaluated using representative sample. Organization and management responsibility was strongly correlated with establishment design and facilities while quality assurance had a strong or moderate correlation with all the factors. Pest control and personal hygiene was not satisfactorily developed according to the results. Establishment design and facilities (ED&F) was the major root cause for the food hygiene problems identified where continuous attention and top management commitment as well as additional capital investments were needed to improve design and facilities of manufacturing plants in the sector. Similarly, Quality assurance systems were not in complete compliance with food safety, mostly due to the incomplete system developments, lack of expert knowledge in the industry as well as inappropriate practices. However, HACCP based FSMS have created enabling environment to improve GMP requirements while increasing food safety implementation in tea industry. Nevertheless, factories with HACCP based FSMS had better infrastructure and systematic operations with trained operators rather than factories without any HACCP based FSMS. The efficacy of processing, recording and personnel hygiene were satisfactorily improved in factories which had implemented HACCP based FSMS.