When making ready-to-eat (RTE) meat products, the processing step that poses the greatest biological hazard is the post-lethality handling step. It is when meat products are handled after cooking and packaging that they are at the greatest risk for environmental contamination from L. monocytogenes. And how do you control this hazard? I can’t think of a critical control point (CCP) that would effectively control it.
A Listeria program would work better for controlling the Listeria hazard at this step than a CCP. The purpose of a Listeria Control Program (LCP) is to verify the effectiveness of your sanitation program by microbial sampling and testing the environment to identify sources of Listeria contamination that may exist after cleaning and sanitizing.