Food Defense Online (June 2020)

Food Defense is the effort to protect food from acts of intentional adulteration. The FDA issued the final rule in May 2016 on mitigation strategies to protect food against “Intentional Adulteration”, which requires applicable facilities to formulate and implement food defense plans. The purpose of the food defense plan is to prevent food products being adulterated from any source inside or outside the company. Such acts intended to cause wide-spread harm to public health, including but not limited to acts of terrorism intending to target food supply, could cause illness, death and economic turmoil to the food supply. Implementing an effective food defense plan will allow for the prevention, protection against, mitigation, response time and recovery from any intentional adulteration of our food supply. Furthermore, food defense is already a requirement for all GFSI accredited Food Safety Management Systems (SQF, BRC etc.).