Food Defense and Food Fraud in GFSI Benchmarking Requirements for Food Safety Certification Programs

Food safety ensures that food will not cause an adverse health effect among consumers when it is prepared and consumed in accordance with the intended use (International Organization for Standardization [ISO] 22000). By definition, it includes both intentional and unintentional contaminations. Historically, however, the concept of food safety is focused on the prevention of the unintentional contamination of food products.

So, what about intentional contamination? There are two main types of intentional food product contamination: ideologically motivated contamination and economically motivated contamination. Considering both types a growing issue worldwide, the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) included food defense and food fraud prevention among the GFSI Benchmarking Requirements in 2017. Since then, food defense and food fraud prevention are mandatory parts of GFSI-recognized food safety certification programs.

GFSI defines food defense as “the process to ensure the security of food, food ingredients, feed or food packaging from all forms of intentional malicious attack including ideologically motivated attack leading to contamination or unsafe product.” It defines food fraud as “a collective term encompassing the deliberate and intentional substitution, addition, tampering, or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients, feed, food packaging or labeling, product information or false or misleading statements made about a product for economic gain that could impact consumer health.”

The table shows the GFSI Benchmarking Requirements (2020) on food defense and food fraud prevention in food safety certification programs for food processors.

So, if an organization wants to be certified through a GFSI-recognized food safety certification program, they should do the following:

1.     Conduct risk assessments to identify food defense threats and food fraud vulnerabilities

2.     Define and prioritize control measures for the identified threats and vulnerabilities

3.     Develop and implement a food defense plan and food fraud prevention plan as part of the organization`s food safety management system to mitigate risks

In 2020, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) published an updated IFC Food Safety Handbook. The handbook includes  tools that help companies develop food safety management systems in line with GFSI-recognized certification program requirements and, in particular, comply with the requirements on food defense and food fraud prevention.

See our website, at www.ifc.org/foodsafety, to learn more on food fraud and defense from the Webinar.