Licensing

Food Safety Program for Wildcatch and Aquaculture

As a condition of your licence, you are required to implement a food safety program for your seafood business.

The food safety program will ensure that company management assumes responsibility for the control of the production of safe food. Experience in quality assurance would be necessary to develop a food safety program.

To develop a food safety program, you can:

  1. Obtain a food safety program template from Seafood Industry Victoria (Office 14, Melbourne Seafood Centre, 133 Kensington Road, West Melbourne, 3003. Telephone: (03) 9687 0673). Seafood Industry Victoria has developed a template for wildcatch businesses that complies with the Australia New Zealand Foods Standards Code and PrimeSafe licensing requirements; or
  2. Create your own individual food safety plan that covers all the requirements set out below.

The contents of a food safety program will need to include:

  • The policy objectives of the seafood business for the production of seafood and seafood products that are safe to eat and are suitable for their intended use;
  • Procedures for each stage of production of the business;
  • The system of operational hygiene process controls that are effective in ensuring that seafood and seafood products produced by the business are safe to eat; and
  • User records to verify the production of safe seafood and seafood products

Food Safety Program Contents - Minimum Requirements

  1. Company policy – declaration of preparedness to adhere to the food safety program
  2. Management and staff responsibilities
  3. Statement indicating staff (crew) training requirements
  4. Process flow chart
  5. Cleaning and maintenance schedule
  6. Process control procedures:
    ­- Pest control;
    ­- Personal hygiene;
    ­- Seafood processing;
    ­- Harvest (catch);
    ­- Storage and packaging; and
    ­- Distribution
  7. Customer complaint and recall procedure
  8. Management review and corrective action procedure
  9. Records:
    ­- Training;
    ­- Cleaning;
    ­- Pest control;
    ­- Process flow chart: growing, harvest (catch) and distribution;
    ­- Management review, internal audit and corrective action; and
    ­- Fish harvest (catch) and distribution (traceability)

PrimeSafe conducts random reviews of food safety programs throughout the year.