Meat + Poultry - September 2006 - 58

PERSPECTIVE

What is your segment doing to increase security?

Joe Bickley

Donna Garren

Skip Seward

Glenn Slack

Meat and seafood
consultant
■ Specific security measures in the retail environment are kept confidential.
There are standard measures common among almost all companies to
guard against illegal activities, but retailers have also
employed special training
to ensure product security,
quality and consistency by
developing detailed policies and procedures regarding the handling, inventory
control, storage, processing, sanitation and monitoring of fresh food. One
of the best forms of training is in customer service.
The presence of store associates on the sales floor
serves as a deterrent to
theft and other security issues. By emphasizing the
positive aspects of customer service by greeting and
speaking with customers,
negative security patterns
are remarkably reduced. A
good example of this happened recently in a retailer
in the Carolinas where a
meat manager on the sales
floor observed a customer
injecting a substance into
a package of meat with a
syringe.

VP, health & safety
regulatory affairs, National
Restaurant Association
■ The National Restaurant
Association and our nation's 925,000 restaurants,
along with government
and allied food partners,
are working to ensure that
our nation's food supply -
through the development
of new technologies and
programs - can provide
the highest levels of food
safety and security possible.
In the days after 9/11, our
industry, together with the
FDA, USDA and DHS, intensified an already active
program to share information and expertise about
food security. The development of a systematic foodsecurity-management approach specifically for the
restaurant and foodservice
industry - the TEAM approach (Threat Evaluation,
Assessment and Management) - is based on
threat-management principles and is similar to
food-safety systems currently used in the industry,
enabling managers and
operators to develop their
own food-security plans
that are specific to their
operations.

VP, regulatory affairs,
American Meat Institute
■ With 95 percent of the
American public consuming meat and poultry products, the importance of
protecting the integrity
and safety of our products
is obvious. Although a
strong security infrastructure was present prior to
9/11, meat and poultry
companies have further
tightened existing security
and safety checks. Our industry's security infrastructure includes:
* Plant security: Fences and
security guards are commonplace; visitors are
heavily restricted and always escorted.
* Internal food-safety
checks: Veterinarian inspections prior to slaughter
identify and remove animals not fit for human consumption; government and
private laboratories screen
for unusual levels of compounds in tissue; metal detectors identify any inadvertent metal contamination; microbiological
tests ensure that existing
safety interventions are
functioning correctly and
no additional contamination has occurred.

Principal, Reburn-Julia
Associates LLC
■ As a result of persistent
efforts by the veterinary
profession, we are seeing
more and more about biosecurity on the farm and in
production systems. Adhering to a set of biosecurity
principles is something that
everyone can and should
do at the production level.
States like California, North
Carolina, Georgia and Florida are leading the way in
preparedness, response
and recovery initiatives.
California is engaging its
dairy industry in first-rate
test exercises focused on
rapid response and containment to minimize further spread. North Carolina
is teaching us the concept
of business continuity. The
emphasis is on getting livestock producers back in
business after a disaster as
quickly as possible. A national system for animal
identification and traceability is slowly but surely
moving forward. Animalhealth officials must have
the ability to trace back to
the farm of origin in order
to quickly contain and
minimize further spread
of disease.

8 FSI

SEPTEMBER 2006

FOOD SYSTEMS

ınsıder

Meat + Poultry - September 2006

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