HACCP and ISO 22000 in Kenitra

The Codex Alimentarius HACCP (CXC 1-1969, substantially revised in 2020) asks you to identify, step by step, the hazards that can reach an unacceptable level, then to control them where it is effective. The text distinguishes ordinary good hygiene practices, those that need greater attention, and critical control points. This gradation weighs heavily for fresh fruit: no cooking step destroys the germs, and the safety of the product depends mainly on hygiene practices kept up every day.

ISO 22000:2018 organises this plan into a management system and classifies each control measure as a CCP or an OPRP. In the region it interests mainly the units that process fruit, by freezing or into purees and juices, and that supply manufacturers in Morocco or abroad. For fresh fruit sold to European retail, importers generally expect a GFSI-recognised scheme. ISO 22000 alone is not one, but a well-built ISO 22000 system is a base for FSSC 22000 version 7.

The packing stations of the Gharb plain are the first concerned: receipt of fruit from farms, sorting, grading, washing or cooling depending on the product, packing, cold storage and loading. Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, citrus and early vegetables do not share the same hazards or the same control points, and a single station sometimes handles several over the year.

Next come the units that process this fruit: freezing, purees, coulis, juices, vegetable preserves. Their HACCP plan includes a heat treatment or a freezing process, with its own validations, and their ONSSA regime may differ from that of the station: juices and heat-treated vegetable preserves fall under sanitary approval.

The service also concerns the cold stores and hauliers that hold the cold chain until the trucks leave, and the packaging manufacturers that deliver punnets, crates or films to the stations and must answer their customers' questions about food-contact materials.

Kenitra lives off two neighbouring economies. The Atlantic Free Zone has made it an automotive hub, with the plant of a major car-maker opened in 2019 and a network of suppliers of wiring, plastic parts, seats and metal parts. All around, the agricultural plain of the Gharb produces red fruit, citrus and early vegetables, in large part for export, packed in stations and shipped under cold, and feeds a food processing industry.

For food safety, it is the second face that counts, but the first is not without effect. The automotive industry has accustomed the region to process control, supplier audits and rigorous records. Technicians and managers move from one sector to the other and bring these reflexes to food stations and plants.

The rhythm of the campaigns structures everything else. A station may run flat out for a few months then slow down, with headcount that swells and teams that change from one season to the next. The HACCP plan must be ready before the first day of harvest, and operators trained before they step onto the line. Water has a central place: it is used for washing, cooling and cleaning surfaces, and its quality must be controlled and proven. So does the cold chain, from receipt to loading, because damaged or warmed red fruit deteriorates fast.

Finally, foreign buyers' requirements on pesticide residues and traceability oblige the station to link what happens in the field to what it ships, batch by batch.

A fresh fruit importer first asks basic questions: does the site have its ONSSA sanitary authorisation, does the HACCP plan cover every product shipped, which certificate does the site hold? It then asks for evidence: pesticide residue analyses by batch or by grower, microbiological analyses of water and surfaces, temperature records of cold rooms and trucks, a traceability test that goes back from the pallet to the grower. Manufacturers buying frozen fruit or purees add microbiological specifications on the product and evidence of process validation.

The weak points we meet most often in the Gharb stations are concrete. The hazard analysis is the same for all fruit, although risks differ between a strawberry, an orange and a vegetable. Wash water has neither a defined criterion nor monitoring of its treatment. Hand and glove hygiene of sorters is treated as a simple instruction, with no verification. Harvest crates returning from the field are neither cleaned nor tracked. Seasonal workers arrive with no recorded training. Finally, rejected or downgraded batches are not physically separated from conforming batches.