Corrective Actions for Food Businesses: Examples and How to Record Them

Corrective actions are one of the most important parts of your Food Control Plan, and one of the parts that food businesses get wrong most often. If you’ve ever had a verifier flag your corrective action records, or if you’re not sure what counts as a corrective action in the first place, this guide is for you.

What is a Corrective Action?

A corrective action is what you do when something in your food operation doesn’t go to plan. Specifically, it’s what you do when a food safety procedure fails or a critical limit is breached.

Your Food Control Plan sets out how things should be done. Corrective actions kick in when things don’t happen that way.

For example: your FCP says fridges should be at or below 5 degrees. You check the fridge and it’s reading 8 degrees. That’s a deviation. The corrective action is what you do about it.

Why Corrective Actions Matter

Verifiers don’t expect your food business to run perfectly every single day. Things go wrong. Equipment breaks, deliveries arrive late, staff make mistakes. That’s normal.

What verifiers want to see is that when something goes wrong, you noticed it, you did something about it, and you wrote it down. A business with well-documented corrective actions shows that it’s managing food safety actively, not just hoping for the best.

On the other hand, a business with no corrective actions on record is a red flag. Either nothing ever goes wrong (unlikely) or problems are happening and nobody is catching them (more likely). This is one of the top things checked during a verification visit.

When Do You Need a Corrective Action?

You need to record a corrective action whenever:

• A temperature is outside the acceptable range (fridge too warm, food not cooked to the right temp, hot-holding below 60 degrees)
• A delivery arrives damaged, out of temperature, or past its use-by date
• A cleaning procedure wasn’t completed or wasn’t effective
• Cross-contamination occurred or was at risk of occurring
• A pest issue was identified
• Any other food safety procedure in your FCP wasn’t followed correctly

The key question is: did something happen that could affect the safety of the food? If yes, you need a corrective action.

How to Write a Corrective Action

A good corrective action record answers four questions:

1. What happened? Describe the problem clearly.
2. When did it happen? Date and time.
3. What did you do about it? The immediate action you took to fix the problem and protect food safety.
4. What will you do to stop it happening again? The longer-term fix, if applicable.

Keep it factual and specific. Don’t write an essay, but give enough detail that someone reading it later can understand exactly what happened and what you did.

Real Examples

Here are examples of corrective actions for common situations in food businesses. Use these as a guide for your own records.

Fridge Temperature Too High

What happened: Walk-in fridge reading 9 degrees during morning temperature check.

Immediate action: Checked door seal, found it wasn’t closing properly. Moved high-risk items (raw chicken, dairy) to backup fridge immediately. Assessed all food in the affected fridge. Assessed all items using the 2-hour/4-hour rule: food that had been above 5 degrees for less than 2 hours was moved to the backup fridge, food between 2 and 4 hours would need to be used immediately, and anything over 4 hours must be discarded. One tray of pre-made sandwiches that had been in there overnight was discarded.

Prevention: Called refrigeration technician to replace door seal. Scheduled for tomorrow. Added a reminder to check door seal condition monthly.

Delivery Arrived Out of Temperature

What happened: Meat delivery from supplier arrived at 11 degrees. Should have been below 5 degrees.

Immediate action: Rejected the delivery. Notified the supplier by phone and followed up in writing. Recorded the incident in the supplier file.

Prevention: Will monitor this supplier’s next three deliveries closely. If it happens again, will find an alternative supplier.

Food Not Cooked to Correct Temperature

What happened: Chicken schnitzel probed at 68 degrees after cooking. FCP requires minimum 75 degrees at the core for at least 30 seconds for poultry.

Immediate action: Returned the schnitzel to the fryer for an additional 2 minutes. Re-probed at 78 degrees. Safe to serve.

Prevention: Reminded kitchen staff that all poultry must be probed before serving. Updated the kitchen display card with minimum cooking temperatures.

Cleaning Not Completed

What happened: End-of-day cleaning checklist not completed on Tuesday night. Discovered Wednesday morning.

Immediate action: Completed a full clean of all food preparation surfaces, equipment, and floors before opening. Visually inspected all areas before starting food preparation.

Prevention: Spoke with the closing staff member about the importance of completing the cleaning checklist every night. Will review closing procedures with all staff at next team meeting.

Pest Evidence Found

What happened: Found mouse droppings behind the dry goods shelf during weekly deep clean.

Immediate action: Disposed of all open dry goods stored on the bottom shelf. Cleaned and sanitised the area. Checked all other storage areas for signs of pest activity.

Prevention: Called pest control provider for an emergency visit. They identified and sealed two entry points. Moved all dry goods to sealed containers. Increased pest inspection frequency from monthly to fortnightly for the next three months.

Allergen Cross-Contamination Risk

What happened: Staff member used the same chopping board for cutting bread (contains gluten) and preparing a gluten-free salad.

Immediate action: Discarded the salad and prepared a new one using a clean, dedicated chopping board. The affected salad was not served to the customer.

Prevention: Reviewed allergen handling procedures with all kitchen staff. Added colour-coded chopping boards (red for allergen-free preparation). Updated the FCP allergen procedure to include the colour-coding system.

Hot-Holding Temperature Too Low

What happened: Soup on the bain-marie reading 54 degrees during lunch service check. Should be above 60 degrees.

Immediate action: Checked how long the soup had been below 60 degrees. It had been on the bain-marie for less than one hour since last check (which was 62 degrees). Reheated the soup to 75 degrees and returned it to the bain-marie. Turned up the bain-marie temperature setting.

Prevention: Will check bain-marie temperature setting at the start of each service. Added a temperature check at the midpoint of service, not just the start and end.

Common Mistakes

Not recording corrective actions at all. This is the biggest one. If your records show zero corrective actions over several months, your verifier won’t believe nothing ever went wrong. They’ll assume you’re not catching problems.

Being too vague. “Fixed the fridge” doesn’t tell anyone anything. What was wrong with it? What did you do? What happened to the food inside?

Only recording the problem, not the fix. A corrective action isn’t just “fridge was warm.” It’s “fridge was warm, here’s what I did about the food and here’s what I did to fix the fridge.”

Backdating records. Verifiers can tell. If all your corrective actions are written in the same pen on the same day, it doesn’t look like real-time recording.

Making It Easier

Recording corrective actions on paper is tedious, which is why they often don’t get done. Forms pile up, handwriting is hard to read, and finding a specific record weeks later is a nightmare.

Verify makes corrective actions part of the normal daily workflow. When a temperature check fails or a procedure isn’t met, the platform prompts your staff to record what happened and what they did about it. Everything is timestamped, stored digitally, and included in your audit-ready exports.

If corrective actions are a weak spot in your records, it’s worth trying. 30-day free trial, no payment upfront.