Glossary

Food safety runs on abbreviations, and Crown adds a few of its own. This page defines the terms used across the rest of this help centre. Nothing here is specific to your setup — it's a place to look something up mid-article.

Food safety terms

CCP — critical control point. A step in your process where a control must be applied to keep a hazard in check, and where losing that control means the product isn't safe. A cook step held at a minimum temperature is the classic example. In Crown, a measurement can be flagged as a CCP; an out-of-range reading raises a deviation automatically. See Hazard analysis and preventive controls.

PCP — preventive control plan. The document describing the hazards in your process and how you control them. Required of most licensed food businesses in Canada. Crown assembles yours from the data you're already recording. See Your preventive control plan document.

Prerequisite program. The foundational practices your plan assumes are in place — sanitation, pest control, allergen control, water safety, training. Called prerequisite because your hazard analysis relies on them working. See Prerequisite programs.

Hazard. Something that could make food unsafe, in one of four kinds: biological (bacteria, mould), chemical (cleaning residue, mycotoxins), physical (glass, metal), or allergenic (an undeclared allergen).

Deviation. A record that something went off-spec, and what you did about it. Some are raised automatically — a failed check, an out-of-range CCP reading, a damaged delivery — and you can log others by hand. See Logging a deviation.

Disposition. The decision you record about affected material: use as is, rework, return to supplier, destroy, downgrade, or that no product was affected. It records the decision; carrying it out is separate.

Corrective action. What you did to fix the immediate problem and stop it recurring. Distinct from the disposition, which is only about the material.

Mock recall. A practice run of your recall procedure, timed and recorded, without any product actually being recalled. Inspectors expect at least one a year. See Tracing a lot forward and backward.

GRAS — generally recognized as safe. A classification for food ingredients considered safe for their intended use. See GRAS review and ingredient classification.

SDS — safety data sheet. The document from a chemical's supplier setting out its hazards and safe handling. Kept current for every chemical you use. See Setting up your chemicals.

COA — certificate of analysis. The lab's formal report of what it found when it tested your sample. Attached to the lab test it belongs to. See Lab testing a batch.

CIP / COP — clean-in-place / clean-out-of-place. Cleaning equipment without dismantling it (CIP), versus taking parts out to clean them separately (COP). Both are sanitation methods you can record against a check.

Allergen changeover. Cleaning and verifying a line between products with different allergens, so the second doesn't pick up the first's. Recorded as its own check.

Traffic flow. How ingredients, people, product and waste move through your plant, and where those routes cross. Drawn over your facility layout and carried into your plan. See Mapping traffic flow through your plant.

Regulators and licences

CFIA — Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The Canadian federal food regulator.

SFC licence — Safe Food for Canadians licence. The CFIA licence most food businesses that trade across provincial or national borders need to hold.

FDA — Food and Drug Administration. The US federal food regulator. Selling into the United States generally means holding an FDA food facility registration.

Crown terms

Product. The thing you make and sell, not a single run of it. Everything else hangs off a product.

SKU — stock keeping unit. A format you sell a product in: a 280 g jar, a case of twelve. Prices, barcodes and case details belong to the SKU rather than the product. See Creating a product.

Recipe version. A numbered, approvable snapshot of how a product is made. Batches run against an approved version, so changing a recipe never rewrites history. See Managing recipe versions.

Batch. One production run of a product, against one approved recipe version.

Batch number. Crown's internal identifier for a production run.

Lot code. The identifier that goes on the finished goods and travels to your customer. Separate from the batch number, and built from a format you configure. See Lot code format.

Ingredient lot. A specific delivery of an ingredient, with its own supplier lot code, quantity and expiry. The traceable unit that moves through your recipes. See How lot traceability works.

Finished-good lot. A quantity of finished product from one batch, carrying its lot code.

Assembled pack. A bundle — gift set, sampler, multipack — packed from finished-good lots rather than produced from a recipe. See Bundles and assembled packs.

Hold. A quarantine on a lot, so it can't be used until you clear it.

Start gate. A condition that must hold before a production step can be recorded — calibration current, sanitation done today, allergen changeover done today. See Adding ingredients and steps.

Step effect. Something that happens automatically when a step is completed: starting the best-before clock, assigning the lot code, creating the lab test, or prompting to print the label.

Amendment. A correction to a record that's already been made, with a required reason. Both versions stay on the audit trail, so a correction reads as a correction. See Reading the audit trail.

Audit trail. The append-only record of who changed what, when, and why. It can't be edited or deleted by anyone.

Operations record. A PDF summarising your recent operational evidence — verifications, open findings, program status, chemicals in use. See Getting ready for an inspection.

Units and codes

GTIN-14. The 14-digit number identifying a shipping case of your product. Prints on the carton label as an ITF-14 barcode. See Setting up GTIN-14 carton barcodes.

UPC / EAN. The barcode on the retail unit itself — the one a checkout scanner reads on a single jar.

Measurement type. Whether a product is measured by mass, volume, or count. It sets the unit family for every recipe, batch and yield figure on that product, so it's effectively permanent once batches exist.

RO water — reverse osmosis water. Water filtered on site. Treated in Crown as an in-house utility rather than a purchased ingredient, so it sits outside the reorder cycle.

Yield. How much you actually produced against how much the recipe expected, as a percentage. See Understanding yield.