Food defense

History in the USA

Food defense event types

Food defense events can generally be categorized into three types. These could be carried out by a disgruntled employee, sophisticated insider, or intelligent adversary with a specific goal in mind. This goal may be to impact the public, brand, company or the psycho-social stability of a group of people depending on the type. However an event may contain aspects of more than one category.

Industrial sabotage

These events include intentional contamination by a disgruntled employee, insider or competitor with the intention of damaging the brand of the company, causing financial problems from a widespread recall or sabotage, but not necessarily with the goal of causing widespread illness or public harm. These internal actors often know what procedures are followed in the plant, and how to bypass checkpoints and security controls.

An example of a disgruntled employee is the contamination of frozen foods produced by a subsidiary of Maruha Nichiro Holdings with malathion, a pesticide. The contamination is speculated to have occurred because the employee was dissatisfied with pay and benefits. The contamination resulted in a recall of 6.4 million potentially tainted products. Nearly 1,800 people are estimated to have been affected, and public confidence in food quality was shaken.

Terrorism

The reach and complexity of the food system has caused concern for its potential as a terrorist target.

The first and largest food attack in the US is the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack. 751 individuals were poisoned in The Dalles, Oregon through the contamination of salad bars with Salmonella with the intention of affecting the 1984 Wasco County elections.

Economically motivated adulteration (EMA)

The FDA's working definition of EMA is

the fraudulent, intentional substitution or addition of a substance in a product for the purpose of increasing the apparent value of the product or reducing the cost of its production, i.e., for economic gain. EMA includes dilution of products with increased quantities of an already-present substance (e.g., increasing inactive ingredients of a drug with a resulting reduction in strength of the finished product, or watering down of juice) to the extent that such dilution poses a known or possible health risk to consumers, as well as the addition or substitution of substances in order to mask dilution.

EMA, also known as Food Fraud, commonly occurs for financial advantage through the undeclared substitution with alternative ingredients. This poses a health concern due to allergen labeling requirements. These deliberate acts are intended to evade detection, posing a challenge to regulating bodies and quality assurance methodologies.

Cases of EMA have been seen in the horse-meat scandal, melamine contamination scandal and the Salmonella outbreak involving the Peanut Corporation of America. The most commonly counterfeited product is extra-virgin olive oil. Other products commonly associated with food fraud include fish and seafood, honey, meat and grain-based foods, fruit juices, organic foods, coffee, some highly processed foods, tea and spices. Experts estimate that up to 10% of food products in retail stores contain some degree of adulteration, and EMA events cost the US food industry between $10 billion and $15 billion a year.

Protection strategies

Regulatory bodies and industry can implement strategies and use tools in order to protect their supply chains and processing facilities from intentional contamination or adulteration. Defined as protection or mitigation, this process involves both assessing the risk and vulnerabilities of a single supply chain or facility and working to mitigate these risks in order to prevent an event, and reducing the severity of an event.

Tools

The FDA has developed several tools for the food industry, including among others:

Risk assessments

It is difficult to quantify the risk in a system, due to the stochastic nature of the events. However, it is possible to use other sources of information, such as gathered intelligence, economic and social drivers and data mining to assess the potential weaknesses and entry points of a system, along with the scale of consequences related to a breach in that system. Tools being developed for this purpose by the National Center for Food Protection and Defense include Focused Integration of Data for Early Signals (FIDES) and Criticality Spatial Analysis (CRISTAL).

Food industry stakeholders can perform a vulnerability assessment to understand the vulnerabilities of their system, the consequences of an event and the potential threats and agents. This allows companies to assess and prioritize vulnerabilities within their facility and system. A software tool has been developed by the FDA to assist with this process. Companies are encouraged to create a Food Defense Plan based on the vulnerability and risk assessments performed, detailing their plan of action in the case of an intentional or unintentional contamination event.

Vulnerability assessment tools

The FDA has identified four key activities, or common vulnerabilities within the food system: bulk liquid receiving and loading, liquid storage and handling, secondary ingredient handling, and mixing or similar activities. Knowledge of these key activities can direct action plans.

CARVER + Shock is used to consider the factors involved in an intentional contamination event

Supply chain control

Understanding the supply chains involved in a food system is difficult due to their complex and often obscured nature, but having a good understanding of where incoming ingredients come from can help to mitigate contamination and adulteration. Good supply chain management coupled with regular audits and quality assurance analyses can help to safeguard companies from contamination originating outside the facility.

In addition, companies can take advantage of existing scenario based tools and should follow Good Manufacturing Practice guidelines.

Physical measures

Policy measures

Management

More strategies for various categories and nodes of the food system can be found in the various mitigation strategies databases available through the FDA and USDA.

Global

Federal level

State level

Other groups