Final answer:
Creating a HACCP plan revolves around identifying and mitigating physical, chemical, and biological hazards in food production. Key practices to prevent food contamination include maintaining hygiene, cooking and storing food appropriately.
Step-by-step explanation:
The student's question pertains to the seven steps of creating a HACCP plan and how these steps break down into 3 groups. HACCP, which stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, is a systematic preventive approach to food safety. It aims to identify physical, chemical, and biological hazards in production processes that can cause the finished product to be unsafe, and designs measurements to reduce these risks to a safe level. This concept, originally developed by the Pillsbury Company in collaboration with NASA, has been widely adopted in the food industry to prevent, rather than catch, food safety problems.
To answer the question directly, the three main ways that food can become contaminated are through biological, chemical, and physical hazards. To prevent the transmission of foodborne disease in the home, three food safety practices that can be adopted include maintaining proper hygiene, cooking food to safe temperatures, and storing food correctly. For example, handwashing can prevent the spread of bacteria, cooking meat to the right temperature can eliminate harmful pathogens, and storing perishables in the refrigerator can hinder microbial growth.