Creating a Food Defense/Response Plan in Food Processing Facilities

Food defense plans are tools that help food processing facilities protect their employees, products, and customers from intentional contamination. The basic steps in developing a food defense plan are: (1) Assemble a food defense team, (2) Gather documentation from other food safety and quality programs as well as supplemental information, (3) Conduct a vulnerability assessment, (4) Develop countermeasures and mitigation strategies, and (5) Prepare a response plan. Mitigation strategies can be broken down into broad mitigation strategies that focus on improving security for the entire operation and focused mitigation strategies that focus on specific processes that are vulnerable to contamination. Only the focused mitigation strategies are currently required for a food defense plan. Managing the food defense plan includes employee training, corrective actions, verification, and record keeping.