Blog
- February 21, 2012
- Message from the Director February 2012
Two common questions we receive related to attacks on the food and agriculture system are, "Who would actually be interested in carrying out an attack?" and "Why hasn’t it already happened?" Recently, another example of an intentional attack on the food and agriculture system occurred, with an animal extremist group setting fire to 14 cattle trucks on the Harris farm in California. There are several reasons why this should be concerning: first, that someone intentionally attacked a food and agriculture facility. Secondly, that the facility had good physical security, it had perimeter fencing, was well-lit and well-observed. Third, the group that claimed responsibility for this attack ended their claim of responsibility in their email with the phrase “until next time," indicating these extremists are intent on attacking the food and agriculture system again.
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- November 28, 2011
- Program Specialist Position
The National Center for Food Protection and Defense is seeking a Program Specialist. Further information and application instructions are available at this link. No calls please.
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- November 11, 2011
- Economically Motivated Adulteration
- The National Center for Food Protection and Defense has undertaken a project focusing on economically motivated adulteration (EMA) of food products. The 2007 melamine-tainted pet food event that resulted in the death of thousands of dogs and cats, followed by the 2008 Chinese melamine-tainted milk scandal that led to 290,000 infant illnesses, are two compelling examples of EMA events that had serious public health consequences. One of the primary reasons that melamine adulteration was successful was that the quality assurance test for protein content in wheat gluten and dairy products was not sufficiently specific to prevent adulteration with an alternate nitrogen source.NCFPD is leading an effort to develop indicators for EMA potential in food ingredients. Part of this effort includes a review of industry-standard QA methods in terms of their ability to detect EMA. This will primarily be accomplished by reviewing each of the approximately 1,100 monographs in the Food Chemicals Codex (FCC).NCFPD is reaching out to the large community of food and analytical chemists in academia, industry, and government for help in reviewing the monographs through an online questionnaire that requires 10-15 minutes to complete. Familiarity with at least some of the monographs in the FCC is necessary to be a reviewer, and all reviewers will be duly acknowledged in the final project report.We hope that you will join this important nationwide effort. If you would like to volunteer to be a monograph reviewer, please follow this link.If you have any questions please contact ncfpdemasurvey@gmail.com.
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- November 10, 2011
- Message from the Director November 2011
October 16th marked the annual occurrence of World Food Day, which this year focused on "Food prices: from crisis to stability." Food Day primarily focused on the impact of insufficient food, traditional food security, and price volatility as problems contributing toward the various challenges globally, ranging from riots to food outages and starvation. Rather than just looking at rapid price swings as being a potential problem, it focused on some of the reasons for the volatility which tie back to production variabilities in countries where that increase in production was not sustainable long-term. It also looked at the population growth that the world is facing and the difficulty in feeding all those new mouths. On biofuels, not unexpectedly, FAO favors elimination of what it considers the current distorted subsidies and policies, because they do end up diverting potential food grains that could be used for food instead of fuel. However biofuels are being produced in countries that are often not suffering from food insecurity, so the real impact is hard to measure.
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- September 22, 2011
- Message from the Director September 2011
As we all know, last week was the 10th anniversary of the tragedies of 9/11, and in reflecting on the food and agriculture system, a great deal has changed in that 10 years. FDA and USDA now have groups focused specifically on food defense. We have a Department of Homeland Security that has several offices with food defense responsibilities. In USDA-regulated facilities, the majority of food plants have food defense plans, and based upon the full implementation of the Food Safety and Modernization Act, all FDA plants will have food defense plans. In many companies there are people who have added food defense to their existing responsibilities or new food defense staff have been added. We have great strides made by FDA, USDA and DHS in providing assistance and guidance to help food firms understand potential risks.
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