Food Safety Compliance Basics
Understanding food safety compliance is essential for commercial insect farming, especially for human food-grade production.
Key regulatory frameworks:
EU: Novel Food Regulation (EU) 2015/2283 — insects require specific authorizationUS: FDA considers insects as food under the FD&C Act — standard food safety complianceCanada: Insects regulated as novel foods by Health CanadaHACCP critical control points:
Feed/substrate receiving (contaminant testing)Growing environment (pathogen control)Harvest/kill step (time-temperature validation)Drying/processing (moisture activity below 0.6)Packaging (cross-contamination prevention)Allergen management:
Insect proteins contain tropomyosin (crustacean allergen)Must label for shellfish/crustacean cross-reactivityPeople with shrimp or dust mite allergies may reactRecords to maintain: Batch traceability, feed sourcing logs, environmental monitoring data, pest control records, cleaning logs, employee training records, quality testing results.
Still need help? Ask CricketOps AI — click the chat bubble or press Cmd+J