COURSE OVERVIEW

This practical and highly-interactive course includes real-life case studies and exercises where participants will be engaged in a series of interactive small groups and class workshops.
Food defense is the protection of food products from intentional contamination or adulteration by biological, chemical, physical, or radiological agents for the purpose of causing harm. It addresses additional concerns including physical, personnel and operational security.
Food defense is one of the four categories of the food protection risk matrix which include food safety based on unintentional or environmental contamination that can cause harm; food fraud is based on intentional deception for economic gain; and food quality which may also be affected by profit-driven behaviour but without intention to cause harm. Overarching these four categories is food security, which deals with individuals having access to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food protection is the umbrella term encompassing both food defense and food safety. These six terms are often conflated.
Along with protecting the food system, food defense also deals with prevention, protection, mitigation, response and recovery from intentional acts of adulteration. Food defense events can generally be categorized into three types. These could be carried out by a disgruntled employee, sophisticated insider, or intelligent adversary with a specific goal in mind. This goal may be to impact the public, brand, company, or the psycho-social stability of a group of people depending on the type. However, an event may contain aspects of more than one category.
This course is designed to provide participants with a detailed and an up-to-date overview of food fraud and food defense. It covers the basics of food defense and food management; why food fraud has been included food safety standards; what is required of each standard and how the different standards compare; the food fraud stories that will learn ways to protect business; and the step-by-step instruction for food fraud vulnerability assessments and food fraud mitigation plans using real life examples.
During this interactive course, participants will learn to recognize why food defense is critical to the business and its reputation; identify the risks from potential attackers within the food sector; illustrate supply chain mapping and conduct authenticity assessments; and discuss the development and implementation of food defense plans.