About 48 million people in the U.S. (1 in 6) get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die each year from foodborne diseases, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is a significant public health burden that is largely
preventable.
The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) is transforming the nation’s food safety system by shifting the focus from responding to foodborne illness to preventing it. Security departments and companies with security technology solutions are becoming an integral part of the mitigation strategies and, therefore, compliance with the FSMA Act.
The FDA has finalized several rules to implement FSMA, recognizing that ensuring the safety of the food supply is a shared responsibility among many different points in the global supply chain for both human and animal food. The FSMA rules are designed to clarify specific actions that must be taken at each end to prevent contamination.
The FSMA has ten rules to ensure the safety of the food supply, which is a shared responsibility among many different points in the global supply chain. The rules range from Preventive Controls for Human Foods to the Sanitary Transportation of Human and Animal Food. Perhaps the most significant ruling, the Mitigation Strategies to Protect Food Against Intentional Adulteration, is where security can most impact achieving compliance with the act. Rather than targeting specific foods or hazards, this rule requires mitigation (risk-reducing) strategies for processes in certain registered food facilities.
How The Mitigation Strategy Works
Each covered facility is required to prepare and implement a food defense plan. This written plan must identify vulnerabilities and actionable process steps, mitigation strategies, and procedures for food defense monitoring, corrective actions, and verification. Getting security involved during the vulnerability assessment is extremely helpful in identifying potential adulteration points within the manufacturing process. Having institutional knowledge of the facility and the flow of people within the facility gives security a leg up on identifying vulnerabilities and providing actionable process steps for each type of food manufactured, processed, packed, or held at the food facility.
When discussing mitigation strategies, whether broad or focused (the rule now requires both), security provides solutions that involve the latest security technology and the most cost-effective simple approach, such as securing an adulteration point with a simple keyed padlock.
Security Technology: The Cost-Effective Mitigation Strategy
Using high-resolution security cameras with AI analytics is becoming increasingly prevalent as a cost-effective and efficient tool for mitigating strategies. Security cameras with analytics can be installed within that area, a.k.a. “bounding boxes.” Bounding boxes can be installed electronically to create an alert for suspicious activity within the designated surveillance area. Security professionals trained to recognize potential adulteration events continuously monitor the cameras locally or virtually. Precious seconds/minutes can be saved, and catastrophic economic damage to the business can be prevented.
Security Put Into Practice: Food Manufacture
A well-known food manufacturer had an adulteration incident that caused the plant to stop operations, clean the entire facility thoroughly, discard hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of product, and issue a recall notice. During the investigation, a new vulnerability assessment was conducted, and this time, the Huffmaster team was involved in a physical walk-through of the facility to help identify potential adulteration points.
After the assessment, one of the mitigation strategies was to install analytic cameras in two production areas that contained several inspection ports that could not be secured due to their frequent use. Approval was given for the installation, and the upgraded system was installed within three weeks at approximately $180,000.00. This upgrade included replacing all the cameras at the site. New cameras were mounted in the production area with intrinsically safe boxes as an explosion precaution.
Two days after the upgraded system was placed in service, virtual security officers observed a maintenance person opening an inspection port and dumping the contents of his dustpan into the line. Plant management was immediately notified, and the line was shut down in under two minutes. The clean-up and inspections took approximately four hours before the line was put back in service at approximately $200,000, including the lost product and sales—a significant reduction from the millions lost in the first incident.
Conclusion
Food production and security are significant challenges, from regulatory compliance to monitoring employees remotely to quality control. Additionally, theft, break-ins, and property damage cause inventory loss and can completely shut down operations, causing considerable harm. Utilizing security professionals and embracing evolving technological security advances can reduce the reactive approach to a prior incident. Organizations need to implement a proactive, real-time approach to security that will protect consumers while ensuring reputation and brand loyalty remain intact.