Metropolitan Tea > Supply Chain & Food Safety > HACCP


HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points)

HACCP is a program designed to assist in analyzing the product cycle from the raw ingredient stage to the finished product.

A 2 year process – Metropolitan Tea underwent a rigorous 2 year process to obtain HACCP certification.

Annual audits – In order to maintain our certification, Metropolitan is audited annually to ensure that all processes and documents are maintained.

HACCP is based on 7 established principles:

  1. Conduct a hazard analysis. We determined all potential hazards and identified preventive measures to control these hazards. In the case of tea, a hazard is any biological, chemical, or physical property that may make it unsafe for human consumption, ie, agricultural input residue.

  2. Identify critical control points. Critical control points (CCP) are any point, step or procedure in the tea manufacturing process where control can be applied and hazards can be prevented, eliminated or reduced.

  3. Establish critical limits for each critical control point. Critical limits represent the maximum or minimum extent to which any physical, biological or chemical hazard must be controlled to prevent or eliminate hazardous conditions.

  4. Establish critical control point monitoring requirements. Constant monitoring of all steps of tea manufacture is necessary to ensure control at each identified critical control point.

  5. Establish corrective actions. In the event that our strict monitoring indicates a critical limit of any recognized hazard, established actions must be taken immediately. Our plan of action ensures that no contaminated product will ever reach our customers’ shelves.

  6. Establish record keeping procedures. We thoroughly document our hazard analysis, established HACCP plan and all records pertaining to the monitoring of critical control points, critical limits, verification activities and the handling of processing anomalies.

  7. Establish procedures for verifying that the HACCP system is working as intended. Continual testing is required in order to ensure that our HACCP system is working. Our plan is audited on an annual basis.

Annual audits – Metropolitan undergoes an annual audit to ensure that all HACCP processes are in order and proper documentation is maintained.

As of 2008 Metropolitan is HACCP certified in good standing

For further information please visit the US Food and Drug Agency website.

Safe tea tastes better


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