Blog
- April 27, 2012
- Message from the Director April 2012
At a recent industry conference, an important question was raised: what are the differences between mitigation strategies for food safety, traditional food defense efforts, and economically motivated adulteration (EMA)? One easy difference is that food safety is an accidental event, while intentional contamination for profit or to cause harm is an intentional event. So there are different sets of preventative measures to look at. Both intentional contamination to cause harm and EMA share system-level concerns. But in many cases, EMA is posing a more complicated set of challenges for firms than intentional contamination to cause harm.
- March 21, 2012
- Message from the Director March 2012
Last month, the president released his budget request to congress for consideration. As would be expected given the difficult financial times we face, there are some hard cuts and hard choices being made in the budget. Independent of those cuts, it's interesting to look at how the priorities are established for how we spend our limited resources on homeland security in general and food and agriculture in particular.
- 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.
