Meat + Poultry - September 2008 - 24

WASHINGTON

Could food-defense plans become mandatory?
By Bernard Shire
meatpoultry@sosland.com

ne problem with the way the
Food Safety and Inspection Service regulates the meat and poultry processing industry is that it sometimes uses a two-ﬁsted approach - a soft
glove on one hand, but the other is often
an iron ﬁst on the inside. When a food
regulation rule comes up for consideration, often FSIS takes a reasonable, measured approach: "Let's try it this way," or
even, "Let's try this voluntary path ﬁrst,"
or even, "Here's a guideline for plants
to follow, and we'll see what happens."
But if things don't go the way the agency wants, all of a sudden the voluntary
guideline gets thrown out the window
- and the iron ﬁst strikes.
This could certainly be said about
the approach the agency is taking in its
efforts to get slaughtering and processing plants around the country to adopt
food-defense plans.
Food defense ﬁrst got seriously talked about after the attack on New York
City's Twin Towers and the Pentagon in
Washington, DC on Sept. 11, 2001. But
actually, USDA and FDA have discussed
the issue of preventing poisonings or
sabotage in food-processing plants years
before Sept. 11. There's even been concern at the local and state level about
food-poisoning incidents in supermarkets and grocery stores. But 9-11 really
got Uncle Sam's regulators' brains twirling. That's because fears rose greatly
that terrorists could attempt to poison
or destroy America's food supply - and
that goes far beyond the fears that terrorists could get into meat, poultry or
other kinds of food-processing plants
and contaminate enough food to affect
millions of consumers.
In fact, not long after 9-11, FSIS published a food-defense guide for plants
to use to create a food-defense strategy. FSIS updated the guide from time
to time, developed a new guide in January of last year and updated it again
four months ago.
But the agency has been unhappy
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MEAT&POULTRY

September 2008

about the lack of plants that have created food-defense plans to prevent attacks
or any kind of poisoning incidents at
their facilities. Two years ago, FSIS did a
survey to ﬁnd out how many plants had
set up voluntary food-defense plans. A
second survey followed in November
of 2007. The ﬁrst survey discovered that
only 27 percent of plants had crafted
defense plans for their businesses. The
survey in November of last year showed
the ﬁgure rose to 31 percent. FSIS would
like to see at least 90 percent of plants
voluntarily protecting themselves from
terrorism or other dangers with a plan.
But that's not likely to happen.
Suzanne Rigby, executive associate for the FSIS Ofﬁce of Defense and
Emergency Response, emphasizes that
currently there is no regulatory authority for FSIS in food defense. "However,
FSIS recognizes the importance of having good defense in place in order to
protect the public food supply. Food
safety is one component of protection and food defense is another," she
says. "Therefore, we are working with
industry to raise food-defense awareness and assist in implementing fooddefense measures."
She says it is up to industry to adopt
plans - voluntarily. "FSIS has provided
guidance materials and outreach opportunities. And FSIS will continue to
do so. However, it is up to the industry
itself to actually embrace food defense
and plan accordingly," Rigby says.
To date, only 31 percent have adopted
plans, and apparently size is a factor.
Rigby says larger plants were doing
a better job of coming up with food-defense plans than smaller ones. In fact,
USDA had published a booklet aimed
at helping small plants to formulate defense plans. "Results of that survey revealed that among the plants assessed,
a greater percentage of the large plants
had plans in place compared to the
small or very small plants," Rigby says.
She noted that FSIS would like to see
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measures in plans that address processing security, storage security, shipping
and receiving security, and water and
ice security.
So what's going to happen if 90 percent of plants in the industry don't adopt
defense plans? Will the agency do rulemaking? "FSIS would prefer that industry adopt food-defense plans voluntarily rather than being required to do so.
However, because the agency believes
that having functional plans in place
assists in protecting public health, rulemaking is a possibility if the industry
is unable to demonstrate its ability to
adopt plans voluntarily," she said. "The
functional food-defense plan is a tool
that helps reduce the risk of intentional
product contamination and along with a
sound food-safety foundation, helps ensure a safe product for the public."
Bam! Here comes the iron ﬁst. Because many of the large companies already have detailed food-defense plans,
before that happens, the industry likely
will get together, include trade associations representing the giants and those
representing the little guys, and "encourage" everyone to get in line. The last
thing the industry wants is regulations
spelling out in great detail how meat
and poultry plants should put these defense plans together. But this may be
hard to achieve because of the fact that
most large plants belong to trade associations that can provide help in developing defense plans. While highly-motivated small and very small plants are
trade association members or can get
help from them, a higher percentage of
the smaller industry has no such ties.
They may be uninterested or unable to
get such help
Bernard Shire is M&P's Washington correspondent
based in Lancaster, Pa. With a background in editing and writing for daily news publications, he also
works as a food safety consultant and writer for
Shire & Associates.
We would like to hear from you - to comment on
this story or to request reprints, contact us by
e-mail at: meatpoultry@sosland.com.

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Meat + Poultry - September 2008

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