Licensing

Food safety program for Seafood Processing licences

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

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.

Program components

The food safety program must consist of the following components:

  • Organisational chart;
  • Cleaning program;
  • Maintenance program;
  • Pest control program;
  • Training program;
  • Calibration program;
  • Traceability program;
  • Recall program;
  • Management review;
  • Internal review; and
  • Process control program identifying process control in place to ensure that wholesome seafood products are produced.

Scheduled audits

An initial audit of your food safety program must be conducted by your third party auditor within seven days of commencing operations.

Where a food safety program has not been implemented at the initial audit, the third party auditor will contact PrimeSafe to advise that a major or critical non-conformance has been identified.

Where a major non-conformance has been identified, the third party auditor must conduct another audit within seven days to ensure that all issues have been rectified and an appropriate food safety plan is in place at the facility.

PrimeSafe will determine the corrective action where a critical non-conformance has been identified by the third party auditor.

Following implementation of your food safety program, an audit is required at regular intervals as indicated in the table below.

Licence category Scheduled audit interval

Wholesaler
Retailer
Retailer (Vehicle/Boat)
Wildcatch
Aquaculture

Every twelve months (annually)

Seafood Processor1
Seafood Further Processor1

Every six months (biannually)

1 Seafood businesses that manufacture smallgoods will require an audit every three months (quarterly).

Note: Seafood businesses that process (including storage) meat and/or poultry must ensure that their food safety program is based on the principles of a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) plan.