Food Safety: The food security challenge to plant systems
Everyone in the food industry realizes that if a terrorist wants to impact a large number of people, the water and food supplies are ideal vectors. The Grocery Manufacturers of America launched “Project Vigilance” to assist the industry in coping with these new realities. While Project Vigilance correctly deals with the entire supply chain, as food plant professionals, we need to focus on the plant’s role in security.
In the face of terrorism, normal food safety issues become even more complex. Today, the biological organisms that threaten our food supply, such as Salmonella or e.coli, are often present in raw materials processed into other foods. This is acceptable when the processing steps kill the organisms. But terrorism adds another dimension. For example, terrorists probably would not taint a product with a biological agent just before the product entered an oil fryer, although they might look to contaminate an ingredient added after heat treatment stages.