The part of the standard that stops most first-time applicants — explained without the jargon.
A GAP audit largely asks whether you follow good practices. A HACCP plan asks a harder question: for this specific product and this specific process, where could something go wrong, and what have you put in place to catch it?
That difference is why a plan copied from a template usually fails. A generic plan describes a generic operation. The auditor is looking at your flow diagram, walking your line and checking whether the two match.
You do not need a hazard at every step. Plenty of produce operations conclude they have few or no critical control points, and that conclusion is perfectly acceptable — provided the hazard analysis behind it is documented and reasoned.
What you produce, how it is handled, intended use and intended consumer. A ready-to-eat product carries different expectations from one that will be cooked.
Every step from input to shipping, verified on the floor and signed off. If the diagram misses a step the auditor sees, the whole analysis is in question.
Biological, chemical and physical hazards at each step, with likelihood, severity and the reasoning for whether it is significant.
The steps where control is essential to prevent or reduce a significant hazard, identified through a documented decision process rather than assertion.
A measurable boundary for each control point — a concentration, a temperature, a time. "Clean" is not a critical limit.
What is measured, how often, by whom, recorded where. This is where the audit evidence comes from.
What happens when a limit is breached, including what is done with affected product and who decides.
How you confirm the plan works — record review, calibration, testing — plus the annual reassessment and any review triggered by a process change.
| Process step | Typical hazard considered | Common control |
|---|---|---|
| Agricultural water application | Microbial contamination from the water source | Source testing on a schedule with defined thresholds and documented action on failure |
| Soil amendments | Pathogens from untreated manure | Approved, treated inputs with supplier documentation and application intervals |
| Harvest | Contamination from workers, tools and containers | Hygiene training, sanitation of containers, pre-harvest assessment |
| Wash or dump tank | Cross-contamination across a whole batch through the water | Sanitiser concentration and pH monitored at set intervals, with limits and corrective action |
| Cooling and cold storage | Pathogen growth through temperature abuse | Temperature monitoring with recorded limits and an out-of-range procedure |
| Packaging | Foreign material, or contaminated packaging | Specification control, protected storage, inspection at use |
A step was added, moved or dropped and the plan was never updated. Verify the diagram physically each year.
"Adequate sanitiser" is not a limit. A range in parts per million, checked at a stated frequency, is.
Identical values every day, all in the same pen, filled in the same afternoon. Auditors recognise this immediately.
A full season with zero out-of-range readings usually means monitoring is not happening, not that nothing ever drifted.
The plan is required to be reviewed at least annually and whenever the process changes. A three-year-old untouched plan is a finding on its own.
The person named in the plan has left, or has never read it. Training records need to connect the named people to the plan.
GAP APP's HACCP builder walks the same sequence the standard expects: describe the product, map the flow, work through hazards step by step, set limits, and attach the monitoring records that prove the plan ran.
Because the monitoring logs live in the same system, the plan and its evidence stay connected. When the annual reassessment comes round, the history is already there — and so is the record of every corrective action taken against a limit.
Module 1, 2 and 3 explained, and how to tell which ones apply to your operation.
Read the guide →A module-by-module readiness checklist you can work through before booking the audit.
Read the guide →The Module 1 HACCP plan — the section most farms underestimate.
Read the guide →Side by side: recognition, HACCP, scoring and who asks for which.
Read the guide →Why buyers say 'GFSI' when they mean one of seven specific schemes.
Read the guide →Flow diagram, hazard analysis, limits and monitoring records in one connected system.
GAP APP provides audit-preparation tools and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or accredited by GFSI, Azzule Systems, SQFI, CanAgPlus, GLOBALG.A.P. or USDA. Certification decisions are made solely by accredited certification bodies and their auditors.