Development and validation of an inspection and compliance tool for sanitary requirements applied to cacao processing centers in the department of Huila

Background: Quality is an essential property for consumer satisfaction and has become a crucial factor in the food sector to access global markets. Therefore, quality management and assurance systems are essential to guarantee traceability and continuous improvement of processes. The cocoa industry is no stranger to this, so the Department of Huila has adopted strategies since 2015 to execute fermentation and grain drying processes jointly in collection centers or processing plants. The global cocoa production chain has focused on the production and processing phases. However, post-harvest, as an intermediate phase, has been neglected, being a critical stage to guarantee the final quality, generating low standardization during processing with economic repercussions. Due to this, an instrument adapted and directly related to the conditions of these installations to diagnose, evaluate, and develop continuous improvement processes was not evidenced. Objectives: the design of a tool for the inspection and evaluation of sanitary requirements adapted to the cocoa processing plants of the department of Huila with applicability at the national and international levels was proposed to carry out a diagnosis and monitoring to establish a quality assurance system under the hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP) approach. Methods: Within the research framework, the GHYCAL methodology was followed, addressing seven phases: Scientific surveillance, establishing a baseline, preliminary development, validation, consolidation and approval, application, and reliability estimation. Results: The sanitary requirements inspection list was validated with 50 criteria and a Likert-type scale. It was subjected to a Delphi session with experts, finding that its application and evaluation through Cronbach's alpha results in high reliability (α>0.90). Conclusions: The feasibility of the evaluation list to be used in cacao processing plants was guaranteed, and, with it, establish basic guidelines for improving grain quality through an assurance system managed from it.