Good Retail Practices for Retail Meat Operation Processes

The retail meat operation can be broken down into area and product specific processes. For the purpose of this website these processes have been defined as:

 Receiving of meat products and packaging.
 Storage of meat and non-meat ingredients and packaging.
 Cut Fabrication from primals.
 Grinding meat for ground meat production.
 Sausage production at retail.
 Processed Products resulting from coating, stuffing, tumbling or marinating.
 Packaging of meat products.
 Display in the display case.
 Consumer Distribution of retail meat products.

In this section, for each of the processes listed above, there are descriptions of the good retail practices (GRPs) which can be used to both enhance the safety and, in many cases, the quality of the products which ultimately result. Each good retail practice has been classified as to whether it can control potential biological, physical, or chemical hazards in meat products. In certain cases there is some overlap between processes and where this occurs similar good retail practices have been addressed more then once but from different perspectives. Keep in mind that the information provided here aims to address the most common types of retail meat operations rather than specific situations.