SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE

This is the first HACCP Australia Food Safety Bulletin and is designed to offer information, news, tips and updates to the Food and Beverage Industry. Whether you are managing a processing plant, operation a restaurant or merely looking for a suitable and food safe product, we do trust this periodic journal has something of interest for everyone. Many of the articles herein have been written in response to the information most commonly sort by our customers and industry in general.

HACCP Australia has no interests outside the food, beverage and water industries and , as such, is Australia's leading specialist 'food safety' organisation. HACCP Australia undertakes a variety of food safety projects for companies throughout Australia and the region including:

• Composition and accreditation of Food Safety Programmes
• Food Safety Training
• Verification and Endorsements of products supplied to the food industry
• Food label compliance
• VQA Programme Management
• Research and Specialist Projects

FOOD SAFETY LEGISLATION UPDATE
The last meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council in 2003 was held in Auckland at the very end of 2003. The Ministerial Council of ANZFRMC, which comprises Health and Agriculture Ministers, from Australia and New Zealand, agreed to policy guidelines for four important areas of food management. These policy guidelines have now been referred to Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) to commence the food standards development process.
Ministers agreed that food safety programs, in highest risk sectors, be made mandatory in Australia and adopted policy guidelines developed by the Ministerial Council to improve food safety management in Australia. These principles include overarching recommendations on which food business sectors should develop and implement mandatory food safety programs.

Those food business sectors included in mandatory food safety programs will be:

• Food service in which potential hazardous food is served to vulnerable populations (e.g. hospitals, nursing homes)
• Producing, harvesting, processing and distributing raw oysters and other bivalves
• Catering operations serving food to the general public
• Producing manufactured and fermented meat

Implementation of mandatory food safety programs for these sectors will be required within two years after the amendments to the Food Standards Code are gazetted. This allows for a flexible approach to implementation.

New Zealand is currently reviewing both mandatory and voluntary risk-based management plans in the context of a broad ranging Domestic Food Review.