I'll take a shot at it. I'm no food safety expert.
The origin of the system, I'm told, was when they were preparing for the Apollo space program and they had to feed astronauts in space. They started to think differently about how you would prepare food and ensure that no one was going to get sick in space. The basic concept is that it's a production control system where every so-called critical control point in manufacturing, right from receiving animals through to manufacturing, is monitored, and everything—we talked about temperature, cook times, sanitation processes—is delivered according to standard procedures and the outcomes are always tracked. You build in safety. You can't ultimately inspect every pound of beef or pork that comes out of the plant. You have to have a system that begins at the beginning and controls risk at all those critical control points from beginning to end, and you have an oversight system that ensures you're doing that.
HACCP is hazard analysis and critical control points. It's based on that philosophy. Canada was a leader in making it mandatory in the meat industry, and it's a universal standard now.