Exploring Idiosyncrasies and Potentialities of HACCP Team Across the Sharjah Food Industry, UAE

Abstract

HACCP team is a group of people selected to undertake food safety and tackle all its related issues. This study was based on standard interview in order to explore HACCP teams' idiosyncrasies and potentialities across Sharjah-UAE food industry, quantitative and qualitative techniques were of use to conduct the analysis. There were 61 accessible HACCP certified businesses from which 11 businesses were selected randomly in order to carry out the interviews. Most businesses have a reasonable and a sufficient number of HACCP team members ranged between 5-10 members. Generally, total of 10 (90.9%) businesses out of 11(the total sample), have either an ideal number of HACCP team or close to this number which is recommended or stipulated in the regulation. Regarding HACCP team qualifications and expertise, the study had discovered that most of the HACCP team members were qulifed, it noticed that 7(63.6%) HACCP team represents the elite in his disciplinary; who’s the majority of their members got a higher education degree (M.Sc. and B.Sc.). And almost 3 (27%) HACCP team, whom they were completely education with B.Sc., expects one HACCP team that was trained by formal training. HACCP teams were with various disciplines and multidisciplinary approach existing to a certain extent in some HACCP teams whereas inter-hierarchical approach was not being known but surprisingly it appeared to exist in some HACCP teams.  Finally study recommended as the HACCP team should be multidisciplinary; it also needs to be inter-hierarchical. Multidisciplinary represents the breadth/horizontal aspect of the organization, which mainly refers to differing knowledge and expertise, while inter-hierarchical refers to the length/vertical side of the organization represented by all levels within the organization.