According to Food Engineering Magazine, the well-known Hazard Assessment Critical Control Points (HACCP) are finding new definition around particular assessments of intentional contamination and food fraud.
Since intent and fraud both imply human intervention, the critical control points (CCPs) for the T in “threats” differ in focus from simple proactive prevention of food-borne disease.
Jim Cook, SGS North America food scientific and regulatory affairs manager, defines TACCP according to the British Retail Consortium as, “a system to give a structured approach to the assessment of the security of food and drink in relation to malicious contamination and food fraud.”
Greg West, International Accreditation Service marketing manager, says that TACCP’s adjusted focus “may need input from employees from different disciplines, such as HR, procurement and/or security.” According to West, “TACCP is also mean to complement existing business risk management and incident management processes. Examples of food threats under TACCP include malicious contamination, economically motivated adulteration, extortion, espionage, counterfeiting and cybercrime.”
The FDA recognizes this particular type of regulation has little precedent. It concludes a hazard-type analysis of risk is better suited to economically-motivated food fraud, rather than the vulnerability-assessment model which addresses acts of food terrorism.
TACCP can work with FSMA to identify pertinent threats within a particular scope. It provides some overlap with the elements of FSMA’s required vulnerability assessments, but according to Felix Amiri, technical director for Canadian-based Amiri Food Industry Support Services (AFISS), “The best approach for dealing with shifting targets is to adopt the same kind of control measures strategy as the universally recognized prerequisite programs [PRPs] under HACCP.
According to Amiri, food processors need an organic (evolving and improving) strategy that matches the ever-changing tactics of subversive elements.
Source: Food Engineering. TACCP: HACCP for threat assessments
