Online tool WUR aids HACCP hazard identifi­ca­tion

Due to changes in legislation and developments such as climate change and the circular economy, many companies face serious challenges in conducting proper hazard identification and keeping their assessments up to date. Wageningen University & Research (WUR) has developed an online tool - Food Safety by Design - to support this process.

Food products placed on the market must be safe. Producers are legally required to establish a HACCP plan before marketing any food item. The first step in such a plan is hazard identification. Based on the ingredients used, a list is compiled of potential food safety hazards—chemical, physical, or microbiological. The next step involves determining the critical control points in the production process for each identified hazard. Whenever changes are made to ingredients or processing methods, the HACCP plan must be updated accordingly.

To support companies in this task, WUR researchers have developed an online tool that allows producers to generate a list of key microbiological and chemical hazards based on ingredient categories. Microbiological hazards are grouped into bacteria, parasites, and viruses. Chemical hazards are classified into 17 groups, including allergens, mycotoxins, heavy metals, PFAS, and pesticides.

Potential food safety hazards

The first step is to create a list of potential food safety hazards based on the selected ingredients. The tool allows users to assess the impact of various processing steps—such as heating or storage—on the occurrence of these hazards. For example, heating can eliminate pathogenic microorganisms but may also lead to the formation of process contaminants such as acrylamide. These effects are visualized in the tool. In addition, it provides information on whether pathogenic microorganisms may grow under the specified storage conditions.

An example

For fruit, six types of bacteria—including Salmonella and Yersinia—have been identified as potential hazards, along with three parasites such as Cryptosporidium, and viruses including hepatitis A virus and norovirus. The fruit example also includes 55 plant protection products that may be present on fruit, as well as biocides and mycotoxins, particularly in (dried) fruit.

Raw materials and by-product streams

In addition to common ingredient categories such as cereals, vegetables, fruit, dairy, and eggs, the tool includes 10 side streams. These consist of currently utilized by-products like brewers’ spent grain, as well as emerging streams such as apple pomace and carrot peels. To map potential food safety hazards in these types of materials, knowledge from previous research projects, literature reviews, notifications in the RASFF database, and expert input was used. As a result, the list of hazards was refined to include only the most relevant hazards per ingredient or side stream.

Knowledge graph

The tool uses a knowledge graph on the backend —a type of database designed to integrate data from diverse formats and sources. This allows the tool to combine information from different databases, literature, and expert insights on food safety hazards and to show how processing steps influence those hazards. A key benefit of the knowledge graph is that it stores information in a semantic structure: meaning and context given to the data by defining concepts and their interrelations. For instance, the concept of ‘food’ is explicitly linked to the concept of ‘food safety hazard.’ This semantic structure facilitates interoperability with external resources that use similar frameworks, such as FoodOn (a farm-to-fork ontology), NCBITaxon, and ChEBI. This enhances the tool’s ability to support knowledge generation.

Once the user has entered ingredients or processing steps with the relevant parameters, the tool runs queries against the database to retrieve the corresponding potential hazards. Results can be downloaded and provide a solid starting point for drafting or updating a HACCP plan.

Knowledge on Demand project

WUR is currently focused on disseminating information about the developed hazard identification tool. This outreach targets small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and educational institutions—training the next generation of SME operators. As part of a Knowledge on Demand (in Dutch: Kennis op maat - KoM) project, WUR has developed workshops and other dissemination formats. This project is supported by the Knowledge and Innovation Agenda (KIA) Agriculture, Water, and Food. The tool is freely accessible online at https://fsbd.wur.nl/. Additional information is available on Groen Kennisnet. WUR welcomes user feedback to improve the tool and better align it with industry needs.

Interested?

You can register for a workshop scheduled for early November by contacting [email protected]. Companies are encouraged to submit a relevant case study, which may be taken as an example during the session.

fsbd.wur.nl