Is sorting nuts a CCP or an OPRP?

What do you think about sorting nuts? Is it CCP or operational prerequiste program, how can I explain the control measure after determining it's hazard?

Dear foodeng,


Please provide more information about the process, the products, the hazards, the control actions and monitoring.

I would consider sorting nuts as just a process step. Why do you think it is a CCP?
Is it sorting on size, weight, colour, sort nuts, etc. or is it a visual inspection on foreign bodies?

The process is about producting a type of desert (the nuts are used between two layer of phyllos then baked and syrupped). The nuts are bought from a supplier. There may be some foreign bodies in the nuts. So a personnel looks through into all nuts to eliminate any of unwanted bodies.

mmmh! Baklava! I love it!

A visual inspection can be a CCP. Depending on the hazard identified.
Make sure to validate the methods and the persons doing this job.

I have no experience in nuts or bakery products, but I know of a comparable CCP in poultry meat industry.
poultry deboning company supplies to further processors for baby food.
Persons are manual checking the breast fillets on small pieces of bones and cutting them off. 10% of the fillets processed in this way is checked for 100% by a third special trained person. If there are bones found, all the products ( the other 90%) is checked completely on bones.

Good luck with your monitoring and verification procedure.

What do you think about sorting nuts? Is it CCP or operational prerequiste program, how can I explain the control measure after determining it's hazard?

Dear foodeng,

Any particular standard involved ?

Why do you think there is a significant hazard ? Does the input have a specification ?

Offhand I would regard this as simply a (quality) sorting exercise as applied to a raw material input unless you have some reason for thinking differently ?,eg past history, or specific knowledge, of "dangerous" foreign bodies being frequently included in the input, eg metallic items and no metal detector in the line. Even if so, it would be considered a prerequisite function in some systems

It all depends on yr FSMS / risk assessment.

Rgds / Charles.C