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A study was conducted to identify and assess the major food safety violations in low grown orthodox black tea
manufacturing process while assessing impact of HACCP based food safety management system (FSMS) in tea industry. Stratified
random sampling was used where qualitative data was weighted averaged against GMP requirements and converted in to quantitative
values to be used in statistical analyses. The impact of HACCP based FSMS in improving food safety was evaluated using
representative sample. Organization and management responsibility was strongly correlated with establishment design and facilities
while quality assurance had a strong or moderate correlation with all the factors. Pest control and personal hygiene was not
satisfactorily developed according to the results. Establishment design and facilities (ED&F) was the major root cause for the food
hygiene problems identified where continuous attention and top management commitment as well as additional capital investments
were needed to improve design and facilities of manufacturing plants in the sector. Similarly, Quality assurance systems were not in
complete compliance with food safety, mostly due to the incomplete system developments, lack of expert knowledge in the industry
as well as inappropriate practices. However, HACCP based FSMS have created enabling environment to improve GMP requirements
while increasing food safety implementation in tea industry. Nevertheless, factories with HACCP based FSMS had better
infrastructure and systematic operations with trained operators rather than factories without any HACCP based FSMS. The efficacy
of processing, recording and personnel hygiene were satisfactorily improved in factories which had implemented HACCP based
FSMS
