Chopping board color coding HACCP is a prerequisite control against cross-contamination: one colour of board and knife per food group, so raw meat never meets ready-to-eat food on the same surface. There is no single legal colour scheme; the convention a kitchen adopts is written into its plan, trained, and checked on the audit. The gov.uk guidance for food businesses, cited below, says a food safety management system must meet the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point principles, and describes critical control points as the points when you need to prevent, remove or reduce a hazard in your work process. The food safety audit checklist on this site carries the check, free and without an account.
Why it is a control
The biological hazard crosses from raw to ready-to-eat on surfaces and blades. Separating them by colour is a control that works without a thermometer, and it belongs in the plan as a prerequisite procedure with its own training and check.
Writing the convention into the plan
Which colour for raw meat, raw fish, vegetables, cooked food, bakery, dairy, and where the boards live and how they are cleaned. The convention is the kitchen's own; writing it down is what makes it a control rather than a habit.
Training and the audit
Each person trained on the convention, recorded. The audit checklist on this site asks whether the boards in use match the convention and whether worn boards were replaced. A board with deep scoring is a cleaning hazard whatever its colour.
Keeping the record
The procedure, the training and the audit results, with the rest of the HACCP records. ProbeLedger Pro keeps them; the free checklist prints. FoodDocs lists its Lite plan at $99 per site per month billed monthly or $79 billed annually, and its Standard plan at $199 per site per month, with a free 14-day trial, on its pricing page cited below. ProbeLedger Pro is $49 per month for the whole site.
Questions people ask about chopping board color coding haccp
Is there a legal colour code?
No single one in law; the widely used conventions are conventions, and the plan states which the kitchen follows.
Are colour-coded boards enough on their own?
No; cleaning between uses and separation in storage are the rest of the control.
Is the checklist free?
Yes, without an account.