vulnerability analysis (1)

Ensuring Food Supply Chain Integrity

This review paper gives the some of the outcomes of two EU FP7 Projects - EDEN and SNIFFER on the development of food defence analyses in the food chain. Food defence guidelines have been developed based on a parallel system to food safety HACCP analysis which include systems such as vulnerability analysis and critical control points (VACCP), and threat assessment critical control points (TACCP). Once mapping of the gaps and needs had been carried out, a secondary aim of the food defence work in the EDEN project was to test new technologies both targeted and untargeted that could be used for food defence purposes. The SNIFFER project (Sensory devices network for food supply chain security) addressed problems related to the detection of biological and chemical agents in the food supply chain, by looking at commercially available sensors in a sensor network that could be deployed at vulnerable points in the food supply chain. 

Food defence practices can help prevent deliberate contamination, be it motivated by economic, revenge or ideological reasons. Food defence should therefore be an integral part of food supply chain integrity and not just an afterthought in the wake of an incident. The detection tools investigated by EDEN and SNIFFER have potential, but a wider range of contaminants and food matrices needs to be investigated before these tools could be broadly adopted.

 

Read the full paper at: Food Defence Analysis

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