Secure your plant

“It’s a program of random site monitoring and contact and non-contact sampling, a scientifically valid method of testing,” says Irvin. Some have credited it with elevating industry standards for testing for bacterial pathogens in ready-to-eat meats.

In addition to food contact surfaces on processing lines, coolers and freezers, non-contact surfaces — walls, floors and ceilings — also are tested weekly. The Sentinel Site Program calls for intensified monitoring at sites where a positive trace of the microorganism is detected and the holding of product in the event of a positive listeria reading at an RTE food contact surface critical control point.

The program has reduced the occurrence of listeria in process areas and risk of RTE product contamination. Tyson enters all Sentinel Site data into a common database to help assess equipment and plants. The data has helped to compare equipment and evaluate processes and procedures at different processing facilities to determine best practices.

FSIS offers these tips for securing slaughter and processing areas:

• Establish procedures to monitor the operation of pieces of equipment (blenders, choppers, poultry chill tanks, etc.) to prevent product tampering.
  
• Implement a program “to ensure the timely identification, segregation and security of all products involved” if a product is deliberately contaminated.
  
• Have a validated procedure for trace-back of ingredients and raw materials and for trace-forward for finished products.
  
• Material involved in rework should be examined for evidence of tampering before it is re-introduced to the processing area.
  
• Verify the integrity of packaging for spices, restricted ingredients and pre-mixes.
  
• Maintain accurate finished product inventory; account for all additions or withdrawals from stock.
  
• Restrict access to the processing area to plant and FSIS personnel only.
  
• Use a clear and apparent system of personnel identification, such as uniform color, to distinguish valid entry and presence in the processing area.

Don’t let the remarkable record of safety in America’s food supply or your own plant allow you to lower your guard. Attacks, whether planned or accidental, are most likely to occur when complacency has set in or an extremely high level of activity has caused plant personnel to cut corners. Defense at your plant helps to maintain confidence in America’s entire food distribution system.

Biosecurity — a global concern Basic animal proteins have become a global health concern. Aside from the ever-present problems of listeria, salmonella, and E. coli contamination, puzzling and insidious animal diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) and the new and highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 have added abundantly to the food processor’s burden of food safety responsibility. And as the food marketplace becomes increasingly global, the challenges to processors worldwide grow. “As an industry, we have to prepare ourselves. We will need to know what percent of our raw product will come from outside American borders and [build] our [safety] strategies accordingly,” says Richard Bond, Tyson Foods president and chief operating officer. Bond acknowledges an increase in U.S. biosecurity efforts since the 9/11 attacks. But, as the avian influenza challenge illustrates, biological villains are among the hardest to identify and control. Low-pathogenic avian influenza has been common in America for at least six decades, cropping up in bird populations each spring with minimal impact on birds or humans. Avian influenza H5N1, a disease currently affecting Asian bird populations, presents a far more serious health threat. At this writing, the Chinese government has announced its intention to inoculate the 14 billion birds in its poultry stock — an almost impossible task. Global health authorities see an outbreak of this deadly influenza in North America as highly possible, if not inevitable. How great is this threat to America’s biosecurity? No one can say for sure, but at least some measures to deal with it are already in place. Tyson raises chickens for its North American operations in enclosed facilities, all but eliminating contact with wild birds and other potential carriers of many diseases. Workers don protective clothing at poultry facilities to keep from spreading the disease. The practice of “all-in, all-out” farming — moving birds of the same age in and out of production houses at the same time – is also deemed an important safety practice.

PROFILES OF POTENTIAL AGGRESSORS Terrorists aren’t the only threats to a food processing plant’s safety and security. Aggressors come in a variety of shapes, sizes and profiles. Here, however, is a list of the high-percentage suspects from the FSIS Office of Food Defense and Emergency Response (OFDER): Disgruntled insiders — Criminals — Protesters — Subversives — Terrorists — Unhappy workers, malcontents with a bone to pick with the company or industry. Careers “outside the law” often come with practiced and refined skill sets and tools. Keep an eye on those with a highly charged personal, political or philosophical objection to the company or industry or its customer reach. Set on undermining the industry or an entity it represents, subversives may be highly skilled and capable of detailed, even elaborate, plans. Driven by political or ideological beliefs, they are motivated to create destruction, fear, mayhem, disruption of the daily lives of the population served by the industry and loss of confidence in systems and institutions. Most dangerous of all can be the individual and collective apathy of workers. Failure to take an interest in or to take seriously threats or the possibility of aggression is an invitation to disaster. Employees need the knowledge, resources, awareness and motivation to commit to a food defense effort.