Apple cider makers large and small have implemented Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) standards and are using processes that ensure a five-log kill—100,000-fold—reduction in the number of pathogens in their products.
Legislation adopted in January 2001 allowed for a three-year, phase-in process of HACCP standards in juice-making operations. The third stage of the process will be complete in January 2004 when very small cider makers—those producing 20,000 gallons or less—institute their HACCP plans.
“There’s nothing different in the way you process,” Mike Beck, of Uncle John’s Cider Mill in St. Johns, Mich., said. “HACCP is basically putting on paper what you do and how you process it. It’s basically a form of record keeping. HACCP is not for control of quality; it’s about control of safety standards—period.”
Beck said that their operation was one of the first in the country to switch over to using HACCP guidelines. HACCP calls for juice producers to scientifically analyze possible hazards, locate areas where hazards may appear, use control measures at points of problems to prevent them and quickly correct any problems.
“There is intensive training showing how to do those practices and how other people do it,” he said.
This training is one of the most important things involved in HACCP,” Richard Koziski, owner of the Dexter Cider Mill in Dexter, Mich., said.
The Dexter Cider Mill does not fall under that category of operations that had to adopt HACCP plans, as they sell their cider directly to their customers. Operations like Koziski’s with no wholesale accounts are required, however, to place a warning label on their product to inform consumers about the dangers of drinking non-pasteurized juice.
Ed Robinette, from Robinette’s Apple Haus in Grand Rapids, Mich., said that on top of using a five-log kill, they have also developed Standard Sanitary Operating Procedures (SSOP), which he called an intermediary step to developing a HACCP plan.
“SSOPs are a methodical way of cleaning your equipment, making cider and cleaning up afterwards so it’s the same every time,” Robinette said. “It is a system of check lists so cleaning is done properly and consistently.”
Koziski, Robinette and Beck are all members of the Michigan Cider Makers’ Guild, which currently includes about one-quarter of the cider producers in Michigan. In order to become members, applicants to the guild must have SSOPs in place before they are admitted, Jim Koan, vice president of the Cider Makers’ Guild, said.
“We’re paralleling the FDA’s and the Michigan Department of Agriculture’s concern about always putting a healthy product out there for our consumers,” he said. “The growers themselves have formed an organization to help educate and help make more information available to cider mills to produce a safe, healthy product for all of their consumers…to be a guild member, you have to have gone to cider school, which addresses most of the problems that come out of a HACCP program.”
Robinette said that attending the HACCP educational sessions has shown him and his brother that developing a HACCP plan for their operation will require a lot of work.
“We realized that it is a very big job,” he said. “It requires a lot of documentation and very careful evaluation of your entire process from the seals to the bottle to analyzing your entire process for potential hazards and putting in place steps that would eliminate them.”
Koan said that with HACCP, cider makers are looking to make sure no foreign materials, such as glass or bacteria, get into the cider.
“We’re looking at critical control points and using control measures at those steps,” he said. “We use thermal pasteurization. The FDA has also allowed ultra-violet light as a five-log kill step to meet HACCP regulations. The federal government is also looking at other tools to kill bacteria, like ultra-sonic (technologies).”
Most of the changes taking place across the industry after the inception of the HACCP plans have been behind the scenes and not visible to the consumers.
“HACCP is pretty transparent,” Koziski said. “The labeling draws the public attention to it. It’s only when you get in an operation like mine when you see the warning label that you’re forced to think about what it says…the label clearly describes that there is a risk for those people who are impaired, older people whose immune systems may have lessened or those very young members of our society.”
Koziski said that placing labels on his cider bottles and in his facility has been a positive change for his business—and the industry.
“I’m happy to put the labels on. Initially there was some concern that it cast risk to the customer that was unnecessary,” Koziski said. “As a responsible producer, you have an obligation to let your consumer know that you’re willing to explain it.”
Koziski added that there are dangers in everything that people do.
Koan said that many retail stores had already been requiring their suppliers to use extra safety measures in order to bring their customers a safer product.
The HACCP regulations were enacted after people across the United States and Canada became infected in the late 1990s with food-borne illnesses, including E. coli O157:H7 from apple juice products and salmonella from citrus juices.
