Food safety risk analysis from the producers’ perspective: prioritisation of production process stages by HACCP and TOPSIS

From the manufacturers perspective, the hazard analysis and critical control point (HACCP) system nowadays represents the mainly way to implement the food safety risk management in food industries. Nevertheless, the identification and prioritization of hazards as the outcome of the first principle of HACCP is not sufficient to identify production process stages that more significantly and critically contribute to the consumer’s risks. With this recognition, the present paper proposes a quantitative risk assessment (QRA) approach based on HACCP and technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) to individuate production process phases on which implementing corrective actions to improve the consumers’ safety. The designed methodological approach is implemented on the smoked salmon manufacturing process of a real Sicilian industry.