HACCP pre-shipment review packets, assembled lot by lot for the person who signs.

A lot of smoked sausage or sliced deli meat leaves a long trail: batch sheets, cook and chill logs, metal detection checks, thermometer calibrations, a supervisor's direct observations, perhaps a corrective action from second shift. Different people keep those sheets in different rooms. Before anything ships, someone pulls them together, reads each one against the HACCP plan, chases whatever is blank and signs.

For the test, AI reads copies of those records for lots your team already shipped and assembles the review packet: lot and date, the plan and revision that applied, monitoring and verification sheets by critical control point, corrective action entries, and a list of every sheet missing, blank or outside the plan's stated limit. The reviewer, date and signature lines stay empty, and the packet never says a lot can ship.

The rule says what the review has to establish. Under 9 CFR 417.5(c), before a product ships the plant reviews the records of its production for completeness, including that every critical limit was met and that any corrective action was taken, with proper disposition of the product. Where practicable the reviewer did not make those records and is preferably someone trained under 417.7 or the responsible establishment official, defined as the person with overall authority on site or someone above them. That training has to include a segment on record review. So the packet lists whose initials appear on each sheet, and your reviewer sees at a glance whether the person about to sign also made an entry.

A sheet can be full and still fall short. Monitoring records carry the actual times, temperatures or other values the plan prescribes, along with instrument calibration, verification results and the product code, name or lot. Each entry is made when the event happens, with its date and time, and initialed or signed by the employee who made it. North Carolina's meat and poultry inspection program publishes a summary of the HACCP verification task that turns those duties into questions, and its step eight asks whether the final review was documented, signed and dated. The packet asks the same questions of every sheet: a value where the plan wants one, a time, initials. A check mark where the plan wants a number goes on the list.

Corrective action entries have parts. When a critical limit is missed, 9 CFR 417.3(a) expects the cause identified and eliminated, the critical control point back under control, measures against a repeat, and no injurious or adulterated product in commerce. If the plan names no action for that deviation, or a hazard nobody foresaw turns up, 417.3(b) adds segregating and holding the affected product, reviewing whether it can be distributed, and reassessment by a trained person. The packet sets each entry beside those parts and repeats what the entry says happened to the product. Whether the action was adequate stays with your HACCP person.

An open agency sample changes what the signature means. USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) said in its 2012 test-and-hold notice that completing pre-shipment review signals the plant takes full and final responsibility for applying its HACCP controls to that product, and that a plant which finishes the review with results pending, and then gets a positive, has shipped adulterated product. Product may move off site while results are pending only under the plant's own controls, with the review left incomplete and ownership unchanged, and FSIS treats a change of ownership as entry into commerce. A lot with an agency sample on its records goes to the top of the packet, with the sample noted and the review lines left open.

Neighboring records run on different clocks. Sanitation SOP records under 9 CFR 416.16 are daily, initialed and dated by the responsible employee, held at the plant for 48 hours after completion and kept at least six months. Where Listeria measures sit in a prerequisite program other than the Sanitation SOP, part 430 pulls that program and its results into the records 417.5 requires. HACCP monitoring records for refrigerated product stay at least one year; for frozen, preserved or shelf-stable product, at least two, and they may go off site after six months if they can come back within 24 hours of an FSIS request. Your reviewer, usually the HACCP coordinator or quality manager, watches for the right plan revision, lot codes that tie across sheets, and every blank caught. This describes public rules in general terms and is not legal or regulatory advice.

When your reviewer says yes against the success criteria, each new lot gets a packet the same way for about 30 days.

Your trained HACCP person reads every packet, dates it and signs it, and shipping waits for that signature exactly as it does today. What happens to any product stays their call.

The side-by-side check goes on during that month, and another job starts only if you decide on one.