HACCP, Plain and Simple: Why I Notice the Gaps
HACCP, Plain and Simple: Why I Notice the Gaps
By Michael P. Lennon Jr
Most people hear HACCP and mentally leave the building.
Fair enough.
It sounds like the sort of phrase invented by a committee trapped in a windowless room with weak tea, stale biscuits, and an unhealthy affection for clipboards. The full term is Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, which is a mouthful before breakfast and not much prettier after it.
But strip away the acronym and the official polish, and the principle is simple.
You look at a process from start to finish.
You work out where something could go wrong.
You identify the points that matter most.
Then you put checks in place before damage is done.
That is it.
No sorcery. No corporate incense. No managerial theatre with laminated flowcharts and people nodding as if they have solved civilisation. Just common sense, properly organised, written down, and followed through.
In a kitchen, for example, you do not wait until someone is bent double with food poisoning before asking whether the chicken was stored properly. You check the temperature. You check the dates. You check the handling. You check the cooking. You check the cleaning. You check the records. You identify the hazard early, monitor the important points, and stop a bad outcome before it happens.
Simple.
That is the real value of HACCP. Not the acronym. Not the forms. Not the box-ticking. The value is the discipline behind it.
It teaches you to stop looking at a system as one vague blob and instead break it into stages. It forces you to ask proper questions. Where is the hazard? Where is the weak point? Where is failure most likely? Which point actually matters? Which point, if missed, lets the whole thing slide downhill?
That way of thinking matters far beyond food.
Once you understand it, you start seeing it everywhere. You see it in public services. You see it in mental health systems. You see it in complaints procedures. You see it in data handling. You see it in local government. You see it in central government. You see it in every outfit that looks polished from the outside but goes soft in the middle when you ask for plain answers.
And once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
That is where my own work comes in.
I have spent years in places where details matter. In kitchens, a mistake can make people seriously ill. In funeral service, a mistake can wound a family for life. In both worlds, the margin for error is small. In both worlds, standards are not a lifestyle accessory. They are the job. In both worlds, there is no room for waffle when the consequence lands on another human being.
That changes how you look at the world.
It teaches you to respect process, not because process sounds impressive, but because when it is done properly, it protects people. It teaches you that records matter. Timing matters. Checks matter. Escalation matters. It teaches you that if something is worth doing, it is worth controlling. Otherwise, sooner or later, the system fails and some poor soul at the sharp end pays the price.
So when I apply HACCP thinking to wider systems, I do not do it because it sounds clever. I do it because it works.
It lets me look at a system and ask direct questions.
Where are the actual control points?
Where should the checks be?
Where should the records be?
Where should somebody have intervened?
Who was responsible for that point?
What happened when the warning sign first appeared?
And, more to the point, why did nobody act?
That is how the gaps become visible.
People fall through gaps when hazards are never properly identified. They fall through gaps when obvious weak points are ignored because dealing with them would be inconvenient, expensive, politically awkward, or embarrassing to somebody with a title. They fall through gaps when systems are designed to look impressive rather than function honestly.
They fall through gaps when the people in charge become more interested in appearances than outcomes.
That is the real problem.
The modern disease in public life is not always open chaos. Sometimes it is polished incompetence. Smart logos. Expensive language. Shiny strategy documents. Earnest statements. Serious faces. Plenty of “engagement”, “frameworks”, “delivery pathways”, and “stakeholder alignment”. Yet when you ask one plain question in plain English, the whole thing starts rattling like a loose tray in a cheap oven.
That is what I call sludge.
Sludge is language designed to avoid responsibility.
Sludge is when somebody speaks for five minutes and says absolutely nothing, but says it with confidence.
Sludge is when an obvious failure is wrapped in jargon until the public is expected to feel too tired, too confused, or too small to challenge it.
Sludge is not leadership.
It is camouflage.
And that is why HACCP matters so much to me. Because HACCP cuts straight through sludge like a carving knife through overcooked beef.
It says: forget the waffle. Show me the process. Show me the hazards. Show me the critical points. Show me who monitors them. Show me the records. Show me what happens when something goes wrong. Show me what changed after the failure. Show me the evidence that this is under control.
If nobody can answer those questions, then the system is not under control.
It is drifting around in a tie.
That line may sound sharp, but it is true.
Too many people in high office rely on position, language, and public deference to cover the fact that the actual system underneath them is loose, patchy, under-watched, and badly explained. They speak as if status itself is a safety measure. It is not. A title is not a control point. A nice statement is not a monitoring system. A press line is not a corrective action. And a polished biography is not a substitute for competence.
That matters because ordinary people are the ones who live with the consequences.
We are the ones told to trust the process, even when the process plainly has holes in it. We are the ones expected to keep calm, be patient, fill in the form, wait our turn, and respect the office, even when the office cannot explain itself and the form disappears into a void. We are the ones left standing in the gap between what was promised and what was actually done.
Most ordinary people are not asking for miracles.
They are asking for systems that work.
They are asking for proper checks. Honest answers. Clear records. Basic competence. A bit of grip. A bit of ownership. A bit of grown-up responsibility from the people sitting at the top of institutions that affect real lives.
That should not be a radical demand. It should be the floor, not the ceiling.
And yet, all too often, what we get instead is performance dressed up as authority.
Nice logo. Smart suit. Fine words. No grip.
No clear control points. No honest audit trail.
No plain answer. No serious correction.
Just sludge with a letterhead.
That is why HACCP is bigger than food safety.
At its core, it is about responsibility.
It is about recognising that if something matters, you do not leave it to chance. You map it. You monitor it. You record it. You correct it. You act early. You do not sit on your hands until the whole thing catches fire and then commission a review to discover what half the public could have told you for free six months earlier.
That principle should apply everywhere.
It should apply in hospitals.
It should apply in councils.
It should apply in courts.
It should apply in schools.
It should apply in benefits systems.
It should apply in data systems.
It should apply in complaints systems.
It should apply in government departments.
Anywhere people can be harmed by neglect, confusion, buck-passing, weak oversight, or official silence, the same basic question applies:
Where are the hazards, and who is controlling the critical points?
That is the question I keep asking.
Not because I enjoy being difficult. Not because I have a taste for drama. And certainly not because I am interested in empty rebellion for the sake of it. I ask because that is how real systems are supposed to be tested. That is how serious adults are supposed to govern serious institutions.
You do not earn trust by demanding it.
You earn trust by showing control.
You earn trust by showing that risks were identified early.
You earn trust by showing that critical points were monitored properly.
You earn trust by showing that records were kept.
You earn trust by showing that when failure happened, it was corrected honestly, not hidden behind sludge and spin.
That is what a grown-up system does.
And if a system is not doing that, the public has every right to ask why.
In fact, more than a right, they have a duty.
Because the danger with badly run systems is not only that they fail. It is that people get used to the failure. They normalise it. They adjust to it. They start calling dysfunction “complexity” and confusion “procedure” and delay “due process” and silence “ongoing engagement”. Before long, the public is expected to be grateful for scraps and baffled by design.
That is not good governance.
That is managed decline with a communications team.
I am not interested in that world.
I am interested in systems that can stand up to inspection. Systems that can explain themselves. Systems that do not leave ordinary people stranded in the gap between promise and reality. Systems that do not hide weakness behind titles. Systems that know the difference between leadership and choreography.
That is why HACCP still matters to me.
It taught me a rule years ago that has never stopped being useful:
Do not wait for disaster before you start asking questions. Work out where disaster begins, and control it there.
That is not merely good practice.
It is what serious institutions are supposed to do.
And if they are not doing it, then people have every right to challenge them, inspect them, and ask them to explain themselves in plain English, without the sludge, without the theatre, and without the usual parade of polished excuses.
Because in the end, a critical control point does not care about your title.
And neither should the public.
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