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A Fresh Look at Food Defense
As food companies revisit their strategies for protecting the nation's food supply in the face of government regulation, the rest of the security industry should take notice.The Latest from SIW
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Consumers in the developed world have come to trust the safety of their food. However, many have little concept of the conditions under which their food was grown, processed, stored or transported. Outbreaks of illness caused by contaminants in the food supply, such as E. coli or salmonella, are unsettling to the public confidence in a safe food supply – particularly when the root causes of such illnesses prove difficult to locate.
Such a loss of trust can be costly for food producers and providers, both in terms of brand and product reputation and the bottom line. Take, for instance, last fall's E. coli outbreak, which caused 205 cases of illness and was linked to three deaths nationwide. This outbreak resulted in significant brand and economic impact for California spinach growers.
As food companies assess their enterprise risks, protecting the reputation of their brands and products should assume high priority. By exploring a unified, cross-functional view of food defense, food companies can create a strategy to lower their identified enterprise risk while optimizing the available resources and minimizing redundancy.
The food industry's myriad of compliance rules and regulations can serve as an example to security directors in other vertical markets: Are there regulations in your industry? Are they being followed? Take a look at how the highly-visible food industry tackles the issue.
The Start of the Change
Food industry veterans have seen many changes over the years: changes in the way we protect our products and assets, and changes in the expectations of the regulatory and other governmental agencies concerning that protection. Prior to 2001, food companies generally assigned responsibility for product integrity to those persons or departments charged with food safety issues. A company's physical security plan, if it existed, would primarily be concerned with protection of its people and assets. While a physical security plan would most likely provide some added protection to the integrity of the product, in the form of food security, this protection was simply an added benefit rather than a designed function of the security plan. During this time, food companies gave little consideration to physical security techniques to protect the integrity of food products.
In late 2001 and early 2002, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) began to recognize the differences between “food safety” and “food security.” The FDA issued its first publication of food security guidelines in January 2002. In April 2002, the USDA, through the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS), began issuing security guidelines for the segments of the food industry it regulated. The U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Customs and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) quickly followed suit with their own food security recommendations and regulations, and Homeland Security Presidential Directives 5, 7, 8 and 9, issued between 2002 and 2004, define the food industry's role in national security.
Food Defense Makes Its Debut
In early 2005, the term “food defense” first appeared in conversations with governmental and regulatory agencies. It was not immediately apparent to the food industry that this new term would mark a change in how companies would be expected to protect their products in the future.
