The HACCP system was initially developed in the United States with the clear goal to insure sanitary quality and microbiological security of the foods used in the first space programs of NASA. More than 40 years ago the quality systems of the alimentary industries are based in the study of the end product, so it was impossible to guarantee the total security of the food. In its place a preventive system was needed that would offer a high level of confidence. The system was designed by the Pilsbury Company, NASA and the laboratories of the United States Army in Natick. It had a basis the renown system of Analysis of Failures, Modes and Effects (AFME) , which analyses each step of the process, the potential failures and its causes and effects. Just as the AFME, the HACCP analyzes the potential failures relative to the security of the food. In the next decade, the Food and Drug Administration, in collaboration with the alimentary industry, applied this system as a measure to produce inocuous foods in preserves of low acidity.
The HACCP system identifies the points where the most important dangers for the security of the food (biological, physical or chemical) appear in the different stages of the process (reception of raw materials, production, distribution and use by the consumer) with a clear objective: adopt precise measures and to avoid unleashing the risks of the appearance of these dangers. Starting from the failures, this methodology allows us to do an analysis of the causes that have motivated them and to adopt measures that will let us reduce or eliminate risks associated to these failures. Also this can be applied to those potential failures relative to the organoleptic quality of the product, its weight, volume, useful life or commercial quality.