HACCP-based Approach for Mitigating Food Safety Violation Risk in Importing Operation An Actual Case of Aflatoxin Control for Agricultural Products in Importing Process

• Published in: Fudo shisutemu kenkyuu Vol. 24; no. 4; pp. 333 - 339
• Main Authors: MIURA, Chiaki, YUKAWA, Goichiro, HAMADA-SATO, Naoko, SHINODA, Naoki
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Japanese
• Published: The Food System Research Association of Japan 2018
• Subjects: food chain; Food safety management system; HACCP; imported food; risk mitigation
• ISSN: 1341-0296; 1884-5118
• DOI: 10.5874/jfsr.24.4_333

This study examines the effectiveness of applying the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) based approach to the importing process to mitigate the risk of violating the Food Sanitation Act in Japan. HACCP is known as a preventive tool against food safety hazards that is better than relying on end-product testing. It has generally been applied to food manufacturing processes rather than importing processes. In our previous research, we found that the HACCP-based approach can be applied to imported agricultural products for mitigating violations caused by agri-chemical residues, especially pesticides. In this study, we confirmed the applicability of this approach to natural toxicants, especially the presence of the unavoidable contaminant aflatoxin in maize, and then evaluated the effectiveness of this approach.The presence of aflatoxins in maize is one of the major food violations and accounted for 8% of all such violations reported in Japan between 2012 and 2015. Primary causes of aflatoxin violations were “Heterogeneous bulk lots (29%)”, “Sweating of the commodity during transportation (18%)”, “Contaminated from soil (14%)” and “Drought (9%).” Based on the results, we conducted a hazard analysis on the food importing process of “aflatoxins in maize”. Nine steps were identified in the importing process and of them, two steps: “Evaluate the test results at exporting” and “Import” were determined as critical control points (CCPs). The CCPs, monitoring methods, and corrective action were evaluated by conducting an interview with an importer. During a high-risk period of aflatoxin violations, we found that the CCPs substantially mitigated violation risk, and the CCPs-based corrective action prevented 47 potential violations in the period. These results show that the HACCP-based approach is applicable to the importing process and mitigates the violation risk due to natural toxicants.