Food Defense & Vulnerability Assessment 101

With the rise of food safety issues, relevant industries or regulators have developed the food safety management system to overcome the concerns. The system is designed to control, protect and improve the resilience of the food supply chain towards food crimes and food safety issues. The protection of food has become the number one concern among food manufacturers. Thus, it is essential to understand the system that protects the food from farm to fork.

There are typically three common systems used in food safety management systems. They are food safety (HACCP), food defense (TACCP) and food fraud (VACCP). These systems are used to assess the degree of situational risks to implement the countermeasures needed and mitigate the risks to an acceptable level.

Always Start with the Fundamental

Food Safety (HACCP)

Food Defense (TACCP)

Unfortunately, HACCP principles cannot be used to detect or mitigate deliberate attacks on a system or process. The examples of attack are with the motives to cause harm to human health, to business reputation or to make financial gains at the expense of the business.

The most common factor behind deliberate acts is people. It might be the employees within the organization, competitors, suppliers to the food business or an outsider who does not have any relationship to the organization.

As a result, food defense is adopted to assure the security of food and their supplier chain from malicious and ideologically motivated attacks leading to contamination. The risk management methodology used in food defense is known as Threat Assessment Critical Control Point (TACCP). It is similar to HACCP but with different focus.

TACCP helps to identify, evaluate the potential threats and implement the necessary controls measures. It shall be assessed by a knowledge and trusted team from multidisciplinary departments with the authority to implement changes to the procedures.

The flow chart below illustrates the process flow of TACCP:

Food Fraud

There are seven types of food fraud as shown below:

The concept in implementing VACCP is similar with TACCP. VACCP can be applied to all ingredients, production process and distribution. The considerations are as follows:

• History of fraud
• Economic and geopolitical considerations
• Complexity of supply chain
• Relationship with supplier and their history
• Raw material quality control

You may also implement VACCP according to the following process flow:

References:

1. Food Fraud: https://www.brcgs.com/our-standards/food-safety/food-fraud/
2. Introduction of Food Safety, Food Defense and Food Fraud: https://samuelheriantogintingmunthe.wordpress.com/2018/03/29/introduction-of-food-safety-food-defense-and-food-f/
3. Guide To Preventing Fraud In the Food Industry: https://www.interregeurope.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/tx_tevprojects/library/file_1603105162.pdf