Food for the Apollo astronauts was not always especially appealing, but thanks to the protocol NASA and Pillsbury came up with, known as the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point system, it was always safe.Countless NASA technologies turn up in our everyday lives, but one of the space agency’s most important contributions to modern society isn’t a technology at all – it’s the methodology that ensures the safety of the food we eat.
For the Gemini missions, NASA and partner Pillsbury tested the food they were producing at the Manned Spacecraft Center, now Johnson Space Center in Houston, and destroyed entire batches when irregularities were found, a process similar to industry practices of the day. In response to agencywide guidelines from the Apollo Program Office aimed at ensuring the reliability of all critical systems, they altered that method for the Apollo missions.
They focused on identifying any points in the production process where hazards could be introduced, establishing procedures to eliminate or control each of those hazards, and then monitoring each of those points regularly. And they required extensive documentation of all this work. This became the foundation for the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point system.
The Apollo missions were humans’ longest and farthest voyages in space, so food for the astronauts had to be guaranteed safe for consumption hundreds of thousands of miles from any medical facility.Howard Bauman, the microbiologist leading Pillsbury’s Apollo work, convinced his company to adopt the approach, and he became the leading advocate for its adoption across the food industry.
The standards also apply to any outside producers who want to export food into a country that requires HACCP, effectively spreading them across the globe.