What the FDA's Food Protection Plan Means to Industry

By Mike Joyce

In November 2007, the US Food and Drug Administration combined its Food Defense program with its Food Safety program under a single umbrella called the Food Protection Plan. This plan focuses on identifying potential hazards to food sources and supplies, using the latest science and modern technology.

The FDA will integrate the plan with its Import Safety Plan to ensure comprehensive coverage of the approximately 80 percent of the food supply chain under its purview. The US Department of Agriculture covers the other 20 percent, specifically meat, poultry, and processed egg products, so between the FDA and USDA all of our nation's food should be protected.

Strategies

The Food Protection Plan uses three integrated strategies:

The Food Protection Plan builds in safeguards from production to consumption. Prevention emphasizes corporate responsibility so food problems do not occur in the first place. Intervention focuses on inspections, sampling, and surveillance at high risk points in the supply chain. Response will react to threats to the food supply with increased speed and efficiency, and will emphasize better communications between producers and federal, state and local agencies. The food industry needs to be aware of how each of these components will affect their operations.

The Food Protection Plan approach is similar to that being used for emergency response planning and environmental management systems. First, by identifying potential hazards, companies develop reactive policies and practices in anticipation of food supply disruptions. These practices include instructions for responding to an incident and the contacts that need to be made. Once established, companies should exercise their emergency response plans using simulations.

The Food Protection Plan gives the FDA immense authority to protect the food supply. The agency will define the level of controls necessary to prevent damage by terrorists, and require food producers to register every two years. The agency will also qualify third party inspectors under this initiative and require electronic import certificates for high-risk shipments. Finally, the program allows for mandatory recalls of food products when voluntary recalls are not effective.

ISO 22000

ISO 22000, the international food safety management systems standard, can be used by manufacturers and suppliers in the food supply system as a comprehensive template to manage emergency response and food protection. Heavily focused on Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, ISO 22000 encourages companies to include Food Defense components in a comprehensive food safety system that ensures the food they produce will be safe at the time of human consumption.

Several units of NC State University are collaborating to help North Carolina’s food businesses learn more about the FDA's Food Protection Plan. The Industrial Extension Service joined with the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ Cooperative Extension Service, and the Department of Food Science, Nutrition, and Bioprocessing’s Extension Service, to spread the word to the state’s food industry.

In particular, IES offers workshops to increase awareness of the need for Food Defense programs within the food industry. Partially funded by a grant from the FDA, the IES effort provides overview training on the FDA's "ALERT" awareness program and the targeting prioritization software tool "CARVER + Shock," used to assess a facility’s vulnerability to attack and intentional contamination. Combined with the ISO 22000 standard, these enable food producers to meet or exceed the requirements of the Food Protection Plan.

For more information on these efforts, contact IES food industry specialist Mike Joyce at 919.250.1113, or go to our website.