Food defenseProfessor of the Official University Master's Degree in Food Safety Management and Coordinator of the International MBA Master's Degree in Agri-Food Business Management , Eva Gómez, talks to us in this post about the Food Defense Plan.
Have you heard of the Lafarge case? It is one of the cases that caused the most ink to flow in France in the mid-nineteenth century , as it was reported in newspapers around the world and was subsequently the subject of various studies and reconstructions.
Marie Lafarge was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment for having poisoned her husband with an arsenic cake. The case became very popular at the time due to the events and the fictional overtones of bank data the incident. The experts did not find large quantities of poison in Mr. Lafarge's body, but they did find it in the chicken broth and in the sugared water that his wife gave him to drink .
However, this has not been an isolated case. Throughout history, many deaths have occurred due to the introduction of poison into the food or drink of the person who was going to ingest it. But… if we extrapolate this to the food industry, have you ever wondered what would happen if a dissatisfied employee added a little poison to the food being manufactured? Unfortunately, this has already happened, sometimes intentionally and sometimes accidentally, as shown in this table:
Food contamination
In September 2001, an event occurred in New York that shocked the world. Two planes crashed into the Twin Towers, killing nearly 3,000 people and injuring more than 6,000. As a result, there was growing concern in the US about security in all areas, including food supplies.
The damage that a terrorist attack on food could cause thousands and thousands of deaths and, to avoid this, some US Government agencies, such as the FDA and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) , proposed the Food Defense requirements , which are now included in the most well-known agri-food standards worldwide, such as BRC and especially, IFS.
The aim is for food companies to draw up a Food Defence Plan , in which they identify the steps to be followed to minimise the risk of food being contaminated intentionally or unduly by the people who will be in contact with the product throughout the chain: factory workers, cleaning staff, truck drivers, suppliers, visitors, etc.