Introduction

HACCP is a management system in which food safety is addressed through the analysis and control of biological, chemical, and physical hazards from raw material production, procurement and handling, to manufacturing, distribution and consumption of the finished product. For successful implementation of a HACCP plan, management must be strongly committed to the HACCP concept. A firm commitment to HACCP by top management provides company employees with a sense of the importance of producing safe food.

This appendix contains a decision tree that may be used to assist you with the identification of critical control points (CCPs).

Critical control point (CCP) is the point where failure of standard operation procedure (SOP) could cause harm to customers and to the business, or even loss of the business itself. It is a point, step or procedure at which controls can be applied and a food safety hazard can be prevented, eliminated or reduced to acceptable (critical) levels

CCP Decision Tree

A sequence of questions to assist in determining whether a control point is a CCP.

OR

A decision tree is a decision support tool that uses a tree-like graph or model of decisions and their possible consequences, including chance event outcomes, resource costs, and utility. It is one way to display an algorithm.

Decision trees are commonly used in operations research, specifically in decision analysis, to help identify a strategy most likely to reach a goal.

Decision tree using flowchart symbols

Commonly a decision tree is drawn using flowchart symbols as it is easier for many to read and understand.

Advantages & Disadvantages

Among decision support tools, decision trees (and influence diagrams) have several advantages. Decision trees:

  • Are simple to understand and interpret. People are able to understand decision tree models after a brief explanation.
  • Have value even with little hard data. Important insights can be generated based on experts describing a situation (its alternatives, probabilities, and costs) and their preferences for outcomes.
  • Allow the addition of new possible scenarios
  • Help determine worst, best and expected values for different scenarios
  • Use a white box If a given result is provided by a model.
  • Can be combined with other decision techniques.

Disadvantages of decision trees:

  • For data including categorical variables with different number of levels, information gain in decision trees are biased in favor of those attributes with more levels.
  • Calculations can get very complex particularly if many values are uncertain and/or if many outcomes are linked.

Example of Decision Tree:

For More details visit: http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/GuidanceRegulation/UCM252446.pdf

http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/HACCP/ucm2006801.htm