ISO22000 and the use of PRPs

According to the ISO22000:2005 system, any company that desires to produce safe products needs to plan and develop processes and apply control measures to control the safety and the non-conformancy of the final produce.

Before applying any HACCP system, every company needs to implement and maintain appropriate PRPs (i.e. Prerequisite Programmes).

By using PRPs, the company will be able:

1. to control the likelihood of introducing food safety hazards to the product through the work environment,
2. to control biological, chemical and physical contamination of the product includingn cross-contamination between products and
3. to control the levels of food safety hazards both in the product processing environment and the final product(s).

PRPs must be appropriate to the needs of the company, be approved by the food safety team (i.e. HACCP team) and be evaluated on a continuous basis.

There are 2 types of PRPs:

a. infrastructure and maintenance programmes and

b. operational PRPs (OPRPs).

OPRPs are very similar to CCPs (i.e. Critical Control Points) and they will analysed shortly.

PRPs, therefore, are mainly programmes focusing to infrastucture and maintenance such as:

1. lay-out, design and building and facilities,
2. air, water, energy supplies and other utilities,
3. equipment (from design to ...maintenance) and
4. supporting services (e.g. waste and sewage disposal).