PCA has earned an international reputation for supplying only the best peanuts.
Accreditation is an important part of our quality service to customers.
In 2001, PCA successfully achieved HACCP accreditation.HACCP stands for
"Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point". HACCP is an internationally-recognised food safety certification system.
After external assessment, the Peanut Company of Australia received HACCP certification on June 4, 2001, for its food management system for the manufacture of peanut products, including raw, blanched and roasted.
PCA uses its HACCP plan as a mechanism to ensure continuous improvement and is
externally audited annually to ensure it is complying with the international standard.
The following has been adapted from the United States Food and Drug Administration's information sheet 
HACCP: A State-of-the-Art Approach to Food SafetyWhat is HACCP?
The US Food and Drug Administration developed the HACCP system after the success of a food safety program developed for the US space program. The NASA program focussed on preventing hazards that could cause food-borne illnesses by applying
science-based controls throughout the food manufacturing process, from raw material to finished products.
Traditionally, industry has depended on spot-checks of manufacturing conditions and random sampling of final products to ensure safe food. This approach, however, tends to be reactive, rather than preventive and is less efficient than the HACCP (pronounced
"hassap") system.
HACCP has been endorsed by the
US National Academy of Sciences, the
Codex Alimentarius Commission (an international food standard-setting organisation), and the
US National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods.
HACCP involves seven principles:- Analyse hazards. Potential hazards associated with a food and measures to control those hazards are identified. The hazard could be biological, such as a microbe; chemical, such as a toxin; or physical, such as ground glass or metal fragments.
- Identify critical control points. These are points in a food's production - from its raw state through processing and shipping to consumption by the consumer - at which the potential hazard can be controlled or eliminated. Examples are cooking, cooling, packaging and metal detection.
- Establish preventive measures with critical limits for each control point. For a cooked food, for example, this might include setting the minimum cooking temperature and time required to ensure the elimination of any harmful microbes.
- Establish procedures to monitor the critical control points. Such procedures might include determining how and by whom cooking time and temperature should be monitored.
- Establish corrective actions. These actions will be taken when monitoring shows that a critical limit has not been met - for example, reprocessing or disposing of food if the minimum cooking temperature is not met.
- Establish procedures to verify that the system is working properly. For example, testing time-and-temperature recording devices to verify that a cooking unit is working properly.
- Establish effective record keeping to document the HACCP system. This includes records of hazards and their control methods, the monitoring of safety requirements and action taken to correct potential problems.
Each of these principles must be backed by sound scientific knowledge: for example, published microbiological studies on time and temperature factors for controlling food-borne pathogens.
MRP
As a result of PCA's stringent quality controls, aflatoxin capabilities, expertise and knowledge, and adherence to World's Best Practice, we are the
only nut manufacturer in the world to have a
Multiple Release Permit (MRP) into New Zealand for our export product.
Click to download a Fact Sheet about Food Safety (48kb PDF)
