Lock Out Food Supply Threats

The scenario he describes has played out several times over the years, even without the element of terrorism. Jack in the Box lost $138 million in two years after the 1993 E. coli outbreak that killed four people and sickened more than 600. Wendy’s lost $2.5 million in sales in the San Francisco Bay Area after the infamous “finger in the chili” hoax in 2005. In the fourth quarter of 2006, sales dropped 5% at Taco Bell after an E. coli outbreak made 71 customers ill.

Castleberry’s Food Company, in Augusta, Ga., is still dusting itself off after recalling more than 90 brands of canned chili, beef stew, and other meat products because of a botulism outbreak last July. Although the state’s Department of Food Safety attributed the outbreak to a random equipment malfunction, the damage, in the public’s eye, is already done. “It will be months, if not years, before Castleberry’s can regain whatever confidence it had among the consumers,” Sorrells says. “In these cases, it’s not always what actually happened—it’s what consumers believe can happen.”

Safety Starts at Home

The key to bioterrorism defense starts with a vulnerability assessment and a rock-solid food defense plan, according to Skip Seward, PhD, vice president of regulatory affairs at the American Meat Institute (AMI) in Washington, D.C. “Companies in our industry need to do what’s necessary to ensure that if there is an issue, they’re as well-prepared as they can be. They then need to really execute that plan on a day-to-day basis to minimize their risk.”

Food defense standards already exist at many meat, produce, and dairy product companies nationwide. While not specifically directed at preventing bioterrorist attacks, these standards are designed to ensure safe handling of food products in general, including safeguarding against intentional and accidental contamination, Nestle says.
“Everyone who is involved in preparing food should use a hazard plan—whether it’s called that or not—and bring in someone who understands how contamination can occur,” Nestle says. “Then you at least have things in place that are looking for the obvious areas where problems can occur, and you’re taking steps to prevent them. That seems minimal to me.”

Larger meat and poultry companies create and use food defense plans as a matter of course, according to Seward. But smaller facilities, which are typically family-owned, may not see the urgency. “In many cases, they know all their employees,” Seward says. “The idea of someone coming into the establishment as a terrorist and having access to the production facility is a lot less likely and would be easier to detect than in a larger establishment.”

When conducting a vulnerability assessment, facilities should perform a CARVER plus shock analysis, Seward says. The USDA’s Web site, at www.fsis.usda.gov, includes step-by-step guidelines for implementing the strategy at any facility. Key components are criticality, accessibility, recuperability, vulnerability, effect, recognizability, and shock (see Table 1, p. 22). The CARVER plus shock method will help to identify a series of critical nodes at your production facility—areas most vulnerable to some sort of disruption—according to Seward. From there, a company can develop mitigation strategies to deal with the critical nodes, and “that’s where the real challenges come in.”

Safer, but More Disruptions

One catch is that countermeasures that make a facility safer can also disrupt its production process, Seward says. A typical critical node in a meat plant might be a large, open hopper where meat products are blended. Someone with access could easily throw a lethal agent into the blender, sending it into the food product. “One of the obvious countermeasures would be to put a lid on the blender, so that someone cannot simply toss something into it,” Seward says. “But at the same time, the challenge is that there’s a reason no lid is on that blender to begin with: so you can observe what’s going on, so you can easily put proper materials in there, so people have access to it for cleaning and sanitation.”