motivated, both targeted and random, and carried
out by individuals and groups. The European
industry awoke further to the vulnerability of
supply chains to fraudulent behaviour following
the well-publicised beef / horsemeat food fraud
case of 2013.
Food regulatory and advisory organisations have
certainly learned from the lessons of the recent
past. Following 9/11, the World Health Organisation
considered the threat to food supply chains
and, in 2002, issued guidance covering “terrorist
threats to food.”
In the UK, following the horsemeat case, Public
Available Standard (PAS) 96 (2014) outlined
a number of threats including economically
motivated or malicious contamination, extortion,
espionage, counterfeiting and cyber-crime; and
introduced the TACCP (Threat Assessment and
Critical Control Points) system as a complement
to HACCP.
Around the same time, the European Global Food
Safety Initiative (GFSI) proposed VACCP, with the
‘V’ standing for vulnerability, being defined as
“a state of being that could lead to an incident.”
GFSI now proposes HACCP, TACCP and VACCP
as three pillars of food safety. In May 2016, the
US FDA issued further guidance to “protect food
against intentional adulteration.” And in October
2015 a Food Protection Forum was held in Auckland,
with its focus “on the importance of a food
safety culture and food defence in protecting
New Zealand’s economy, reputation and consumers
globally.”
With these various guidance documents and
related dissemination, actors in the fresh produce
chains could be reasonably expected to be
awake to supply chain risks and vulnerabilities.
The reality is, however, that the strawberry incident
appeared to take that industry completely
by surprise. Clearly no adequate risk or contingency
plan had been drawn up, with measures
seeming mostly reactive.
But in fairness, while an attack on a food supply
chain could be anticipated and risk-managed in
a general sense, anticipating the product, the
method or the vulnerable point of the chain
would be an almost impossible task. As with
most successful terrorist attacks, in this case the
culprit(s) struck in a manner worthy of Sun Tzu’s
Art of War - fully exploiting the advantage of
surprise by simply doing the unthinkable.
It is perhaps unreasonable to assert that the
industry could – or should - have spent so much
time assessing risk that it would have formulated
preventive and contingency plans covering this
precise attack. The more relevant question now
is how to prevent this form of attack in future.
Various solutions and counter measures have
since been proposed for strawberries. Preventive
measures include revised policies for vetting
and managing employees and casual labour,
enhanced vigilance and reporting of suspicious
behaviour, CCTV surveillance, restricting access
to possible contaminants or critical areas, harsh
penalties for intentional food contamination and
tamper-proof packaging.
Detection measures include metal detectors,
X-ray machines, magnets and chemical indicators.
While effective against the usual food hazards
and risks, however, a determined mind can
outmanoeuvre most obvious ‘cookie cutter’-type
defences.
Heavy investment in detection technologies is
not likely to be cost effective for many growers
dealing in low margin fresh produce, but is feasible
for packhouses. For the grower, automated
fruit picking is now a technological reality, but
besides the investment costs it would be a
shame from a tourism and seasonal employment
perspective if this were to become the norm
through necessity.
According to sources in New Zealand fresh
produce sectors, the suppliers and their industry
bodies are quietly concerned by the incident and
the supply chain threats and vulnerabilities it has
revealed. Some are beginning now to revisit
their existing risk assessments and engage more
deeply with food defence strategy formulation,
recognising it is becoming more than a paper
exercise.
It is probable that this level of assessment and
planning will only become more necessary over
time, and if there is a silver lining to this incident,
it is that it highlights the need for constant
vigilance.
Grigg is Associate Professor (Quality Systems)
in the Massey School of Engineering
and Advanced Technology. He leads and
coordinates graduate, postgraduate and
doctoral teaching and research programmes
in the area of quality system management,
control and improvement. This includes
coordinating the distance-based Graduate
Diploma, Postgraduate Diploma and Master
of Quality Systems (GradDipQS, PgDipQS
and MQS) programmes at Massey. His
areas of teaching, research and consultancy
specialism include operations management,
business process improvement, statistical
process control, six sigma, lean, benchmarking,
Business Excellence, knowledge management,
service quality, research methods and
structural equation modelling.
AN AUSSIE UPDATE
Dubbed the ‘strawberry punnet whodunit’,
Australia’s attempts to find who put needles
in punnets of strawberries picked and
packed for public consumption are no closer
to a breakthrough. The case – which brought
an entire industry to its knees in September
- saw more than 100 incidents around
Australia and one in New Zealand, and has
led to the Federal Government looking at
increasing the maximum penalty for food
contamination to 15 years in jail. So what are
the scenarios police are looking at?
Disgruntled worker – fruit picking is gruelling
work and doesn’t pay well. Foreign
workers make easy targets though, with
allegations of exploitation and underpayment
rife. In a recent case, Queensland strawberry
producer Oasis was prosecuted and fined
$70,000 for exploitation…and the company
is among those contaminated.
Payback – one of the affected farms is
owned by a person convicted of drug trafficking
in the 1990s, and he has a “colourful”
past, according to ABC. The company is one
of Australia’s largest strawberry producers,
and it owns properties nearby – in fact, it
purchased three properties in the week
the scandal broke. Police are investigating
whether there is any link between this history
and the farm being targeted. However,
experts say strawberries could have been
contaminated with needles at any stage of
the food supply chain, whether on the farm
or at the supermarkets.
Food Terrorism - Professor Chris Elliott –
who investigated one of the most infamous
food safety scares in recent memory…the
2013 horse meat scare in the UK – thinks
putting needles in strawberries is a serious
crime. “I actually call that food terrorism,”
the English food terrorism expert says. “One
or more individuals have set out to scare
people, to terrorise people.” Elliot, who overhauled
British food protection policies after
the horse meat scare, says Australia’s food
supply chains are substandard and urgent
measures are needed. “There isn’t the level
of checking and inspections that should be
going on that will safeguard your food industry
and safeguard all Australian consumers,”
he says. “I can guarantee you in Australia
there is a lot of fraud going on in your food
supply system. And if you don’t start to
check for it, it will probably get worse.”
"the culprit(s) struck in a manner
worthy of Sun Tzu’s Art of War - fully
exploiting the advantage of surprise
by simply doing the unthinkable."
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