Editorial standards

Every article is authored by Andrew Langevin— founder of Nature Lion Inc., CFIA-licensed food production operator in Brantford, Ontario, and contributing author of Chapter 29 in Mushroomology (Brill Academic Publishers, 2026, ISBN 9789004751699).

There is no editorial team. There are no ghost-writers. There is no freelance bench. Every byline on the site is Andrew’s, and every article is signed under his name with the publication date and last update date visible.

AI is used as a writing assistant under the policy described in our AI policy. Every AI-drafted paragraph is reviewed line by line by Andrew before publication. Andrew owns every claim on this site.

Regulatory claims must cite a primary source by section number. That means:

• US federal: 21 CFR sections (FDA), 9 CFR sections (USDA FSIS), the FDA Food Code with edition and section number, the Federal Register for final-rule publication dates.
• Canadian federal: the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations (SOR/2018-108) by section, CFIA guidance documents by title and date.
• State: the relevant state administrative code by section number, with adoption date of the FDA Food Code edition the state has adopted.
• Statistics: CDC MMWR or NORS publications, USDA NASS, FDA annual reports,Federal Register Regulatory Impact Analyses, named with the year of publication.
• Industry data: named industry reports (NRA State of the Industry, IBISWorld, etc.) with year and methodology where the report is the sole source for a stat.

What we do not cite:

• Third-party regulatory summaries (blog posts paraphrasing the citations) when the primary source is available. We go to the eCFR text, not the consultant’s recap.
• Press releases as evidence for technical claims. A vendor press release announcing “FDA-compliant” is not a source for what FDA actually requires.
• Wikipedia for regulatory or scientific claims. Useful for orientation, never cited.
• Generative AI as a primary source. AI helps draft prose; the citation must trace to a real document.

Regulations change. Deadlines move. New rules supersede old ones. When any of the following happens, the affected articles are updated within 7 calendar days:

• A final rule publishes in the Federal Register or Canada Gazette.
• A federal compliance date moves (e.g., the FSMA 204 extension).
• A cited statute or regulation section is renumbered, amended, or repealed.
• A state adopts a new edition of the FDA Food Code.
• A cited statistic gets a new annual publication.

Every update is recorded in the corrections log with the affected URL, the date of the change, and the source that triggered it. Substantive updates also bump the updatedfield in the article frontmatter so it’s visible in the byline.

Target reading level is grade 7 on the first 500 words of every article and the first sentence of every section. The audience is a working food operator who has 60 seconds to decide whether to keep reading.

Specific rules:

• Every acronym is defined in 5 words or fewer on first use.
• Search-intent answer arrives in the first H2, not after a personal anecdote.
• Regulatory section numbers belong in footnotes wherever the prose flow allows.
• We do not write “the team” or “we believe” — this is one operator’s voice, and singular phrasing keeps the accountability clear.

A few hard limits, in plain language:

• No competitor bashing.Comparisons articles describe other tools by target market, never as wrong, behind, or bloated. “Not built for your regulator” is a fit observation; “a bad product” is not language we use.
• No fear-mongering.Outbreaks and enforcement actions are cited as facts when relevant (Boar’s Head Listeria 2024, Joriki / Silk Listeria 2024) — never as marketing leverage with an implicit “buy this or this happens to you” subtext.
• No paid placements.No sponsored content, no affiliate links to training programs or vendors, no “featured partner” sections. The Comparisons silo names competitor products because the article is genuinely about them; there is no revenue relationship behind the naming.
• No content the named author has not reviewed. If Andrew has not personally read and signed off on the prose, it does not publish.

Andrew owns Nature Lion Inc., a CFIA-licensed food production business that operates in the same regulatory space the articles cover. The articles use Nature Lion as a worked example where it’s relevant; this is not a hidden relationship.

HACCPlan does not currently take vendor money, advertising, or affiliate revenue. When that changes, this section will be updated and the arrangement disclosed inline on the relevant pages.

If you find a factual error — a cited regulation section that doesn’t say what we claim, a deadline that has moved, a statistic that’s out of date — email corrections@haccplan.com with the URL and the specific claim. We respond within 5 business days. If the claim is wrong, the correction is made and logged in the corrections log within 7 days. If the claim is right and we have a source the reader missed, we reply with the source so the reader can verify.