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HACCP plan template: hazard analysis and CCP worksheet

A HACCP plan is the written record of how a food plant controls the significant food safety hazards in one product or group of products: which hazards matter at which step, where the critical control points (CCPs) are, and for each CCP the critical limit, monitoring, corrective action, verification and records. This template follows the 12 steps of the Codex Alimentarius General Principles of Food Hygiene (CXC 1-1969, revised 2022): five preliminary steps (team, product description, intended use, flow diagram and its check on site), then the seven principles. The Excel version scores each hazard on a severity and likelihood grid your team sets, works the Codex four-question decision tree into CCP or not, numbers the CCPs, checks that every significant hazard has a control and every CCP row is complete, lists the allergens on each line that a product does not contain, and dates every verification activity. The PDF has the paper forms, the decision tree in plain words and a worked example for a cooked and chilled sauce. It is a worksheet, not a certified plan: it does not replace HACCP training, a qualified person or the rules of your market.

Free to use: print it, copy it and edit it for your team. Enter your name and work email once to download.

Page 1 of the HACCP plan worksheetFields for site, product, plan version and approver, a HACCP team table with training and role, and boxes for the product description, intended use and users, scope and prerequisite programmes.
Codex 12 stepsHACCP team and scopeProduct description and intended useFlow diagram checked on siteHazard analysis with significance gridCCP decision treeCritical limits, monitoring, corrective actionAllergen matrixVerification scheduleWorked example

When to use it

When to use a HACCP plan worksheet

  • Writing the first HACCP plan, or the hazard analysis behind a US food safety plan, for a new product or line.
  • Reviewing a plan after a change of recipe, supplier, equipment, process or pack, or after a deviation or a recall.
  • The yearly review, to check every CCP still has a measurable limit, monitoring that would catch a deviation in time and someone verifying it.
  • Before a customer or certification audit, to find the missing steps, hazards and records before the auditor does.

How to fill it in

  1. 1

    Start with the prerequisite programmes and the team

    HACCP sits on top of good hygiene and manufacturing practices: cleaning, pest control, hygiene, maintenance, supplier approval and training must already work. Name a team that covers production, maintenance, QA and cleaning, bring in outside microbiology help if you lack it, and record each member's HACCP training.

  2. 2

    Describe the product and how it is really used

    Ingredients, pH and water activity, allergens, the heat step, the pack atmosphere, shelf life and storage. Then the intended use and the misuse you know about: a sauce meant to be heated that people eat cold is treated as ready to eat.

  3. 3

    List the steps, then walk them on every shift

    Number every step with what comes in (ingredients, packaging, water, air, rework) and what leaves. Walk the line on days, nights and during cleaning, and correct the list. A step missing from the diagram is a step nobody analysed.

  4. 4

    Analyse the hazards step by step

    At each step, write each biological, chemical, allergen and physical hazard with its cause. Score severity and likelihood 1 to 3 on the grid your team sets (the example marks a score of 4 or more as significant), give the reason and name the control measure.

  5. 5

    Decide the CCPs with the four questions

    For each significant hazard: can a prerequisite programme control it here (not a CCP)? Is there a control measure at this step? Will a later step control it (then that step is the CCP)? Can this step control it (a CCP)? If no step can, change the process. The sheet numbers the CCPs.

  6. 6

    Fill the CCP table, validate, then verify

    For each CCP: a measurable or observable critical limit and the evidence behind it, what is monitored, how, how often and by whom, the corrective action, the verification and the record. Validate the plan before you use it, then schedule the record reviews, calibrations, tests and audits.

The 12 steps

The Codex 12 steps and where each one goes

Steps 1 to 5 prepare the ground; steps 6 to 12 are the seven HACCP principles (Codex CXC 1-1969, section 19), in plain words.

  • 1. Assemble the HACCP team and set the scope

    What you do
    Bring together people who know production, maintenance, quality, cleaning and microbiology, get outside help where you lack it, and write down which products and steps the plan covers.
    Sheet in this template
    Team and product
  • 2. Describe the product

    What you do
    Record what affects safety: ingredients, pH, water activity, preservatives, allergens, heat or other treatment, packaging, shelf life, storage, distribution and any limits a regulator has set.
    Sheet in this template
    Team and product
  • 3. Identify intended use and users

    What you do
    How the next business or the consumer uses it, known misuse, and whether vulnerable groups such as hospital patients will eat it.
    Sheet in this template
    Team and product
  • 4. Construct the flow diagram

    What you do
    Every step in order, with the ingredients, packaging, water, air, rework and waste going in and out.
    Sheet in this template
    Process steps
  • 5. Confirm the flow diagram on site

    What you do
    Walk the process during every shift and hour of operation and correct the diagram.
    Sheet in this template
    Process steps
  • 6. Hazard analysis (principle 1)

    What you do
    List the hazards at each step, decide which are significant from their severity and likelihood without control, and identify the control measures.
    Sheet in this template
    Significance, Hazard analysis
  • 7. Determine the CCPs (principle 2)

    What you do
    Use the decision tree for each significant hazard. A CCP is a step where control is essential and a failure could make the food unsafe.
    Sheet in this template
    Hazard analysis
  • 8. Establish validated critical limits (principle 3)

    What you do
    A measurable or observable value (a time and temperature, a pH, a detector that rejects test pieces) that separates safe from unsafe, with evidence that it controls the hazard.
    Sheet in this template
    HACCP plan
  • 9. Establish monitoring (principle 4)

    What you do
    What, how, how often and who, so a deviation is found in time to hold the product. Continuous where possible.
    Sheet in this template
    HACCP plan
  • 10. Establish corrective actions (principle 5)

    What you do
    Written in advance for each CCP: restore control, hold and decide on the affected product, find the cause, record it.
    Sheet in this template
    HACCP plan
  • 11. Validate the plan, then verify it (principle 6)

    What you do
    Evidence before use that the plan can control the hazards, then record reviews, calibration, testing and audits by someone other than the person monitoring.
    Sheet in this template
    Verification
  • 12. Documentation and records (principle 7)

    What you do
    Keep the plan, its scientific basis and the records it produces: monitoring, deviations, corrective actions and verification.
    Sheet in this template
    HACCP plan and every sheet

A filled-in example

Illustrative, not a benchmark

An example: a made-up chilled sauce plant writes the plan for a tomato and cream pasta sauce, cooked in a kettle, cooled, filled into sealed 500 g tubs and sold chilled (illustrative; the two numeric limits are quoted from the published sources named, not validated for any real process).

The example's 13 process steps and its 3 CCPs

  1. 1Receive chilled cream
  2. 2Receive canned tomatoes, vegetables, herbs and dry goods
  3. 3Store: cream chilled, other goods ambient
  4. 4Peel and chop onion and garlic; open cans
  5. 5Weigh ingredients
  6. 6Sweat onion and garlic, add tomatoes and herbs, blend smooth
  7. 7CCP 1: Add cream and cookCritical limit: the sauce at its coldest point at 70°C (158°F) or above for at least 2 minutes
  8. 8CCP 2: Cool in the kettleCritical limit: from 57°C to 21°C within 2 hours and to 5°C within 6 hours
  9. 9Fill into tubs
  10. 10Seal lid film and print use-by date
  11. 11Apply label sleeve
  12. 12CCP 3: Metal detectionCritical limit: every tub passes a detector that rejects the site's test pieces, checked at start-up, every hour, after any stop and at the end of the run
  13. 13Chilled storage and dispatch

The chilled sauce flow, step by step, from receiving to dispatch. Step 7, cook, is CCP 1; step 8, cool, is CCP 2; step 12, metal detection, is CCP 3, each with its critical limit.

Cooking does not kill the spores of C. perfringens and B. cereus, so the cook and the cool work as a pair. Listeria in the filling room, cashew cross-contact and the cold store are prerequisite programmes with records, not CCPs.
  • 13 process steps, each walked on day and night shifts. The walk added the can opener, which was missing from the diagram.
  • 18 hazards listed; 12 are significant on the example grid (severity x likelihood of 4 or more), and each of the 6 others has a written reason.
  • Cook, CCP 1: the sauce at its coldest point at 70°C (158°F) or above for at least 2 minutes, the time FDA's draft preventive controls guidance gives for a 6-log reduction of Listeria monocytogenes (Appendix 3, Table 3-D).
  • Cool, CCP 2: from 57°C to 21°C within 2 hours and to 5°C within 6 hours, the FDA Food Code 2022 cooling times (3-501.14), confirmed by cooling trials on full batches. Cooking does not kill the spores of C. perfringens and B. cereus, so the cook and the cool work as a pair.
  • Metal detection, CCP 3: every tub passes a detector that rejects the site's test pieces, checked at start-up, every hour, after any stop and at the end of the run. The test-piece sizes come from the site's own validation.
  • Listeria in the filling room, cashew cross-contact from a pesto on the same filler, the label sleeve check and the cold store answer Q1 Yes: prerequisite programmes that need monitoring and records, not CCPs.

3 CCPs, 12 significant hazards all with a control, 3 complete CCP rows and 0 hazard rows to fix. The plan summary still shows 1 item to fix: the thermometer calibration is 7 days overdue, and 2 more verification activities fall due within 14 days.

Common mistakes

  • Too many CCPs

    Calling every check a CCP spreads attention thin and buries the steps that make the food safe. If a prerequisite programme controls a hazard, or a later step does, the decision tree says it is not a CCP here. Keep CCPs for the steps where control is essential.

  • Critical limits nobody can measure

    "Cook thoroughly" or "metal detector working" is not a limit. Write a value the operator can read or see on the shift: a core temperature and a time, a pH, a detector that rejects named test pieces. Then keep the evidence that the value controls the hazard.

  • Monitoring too seldom to act on

    A cooling log filled in once a shift cannot tell you which batches to hold. Monitor continuously where you can, and otherwise often enough to isolate every product a deviation could have affected.

  • Limits copied, never validated

    A temperature from a guidance document is a starting point. Show it is reached at the coldest point of your own kettle, at your batch size, with your product, before the plan is used, and again after a change of equipment, recipe or process.

  • A flow diagram nobody walked

    Diagrams drawn in the office miss rework loops, the night-shift shortcut and the step added last year. Walk the line on every shift and during cleaning; the hazards at the missing steps are the ones nobody controls.

Download the template

Free to use: print it, copy it and edit it for your team. Enter your name and work email once to download.

Run this template in LeanSuite

In LeanSuite, food and beverage plants build their own GMP inspections and HACCP verification checks in Lean Creator, complete them on a phone or tablet with photos, and turn failed items into corrective actions tracked to verified closure.

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