What to do with NO's or N/A on a Food Defense Assessment?
Hi Everyone,
I had another question. Sorry for the inconvenience,
I'm going to do a food defense assessment, and basically after the questions are answered, what are we suppose to do with the NO's or N/A that were answered on some questions. I think it will all be a yes. but you never know.
Are you running an assessment or a breach exercise that will generate a checklist?
I am unsure what assessment you are following? FDA Food Defense Plan Builder is a decent program to help you identify gaps in your food defense plan. Like you mentioned, questions where you may check off "No" may indicate that you do not have a procedure in place to cover that item/gap in your system and an area where you can improve. If questions are N/A, as long as you can prove they do not apply to your process then that is all you can do.
We focus on the following areas:
Outside security
Shipping and Receiving;
Mail Handling Security;
Processing Area;
Ingredients;
Chemicals
Information Control;
Employees;
Non-Employees/Visitors;
Emergency Contract.
I hope this helps?
Jenna
Its a food defense self assessment , (checklist of questions )
You might need to provide a bit more information about the checklist.
In general if the subject of a question is non-applicable then it's non-applicable, but the "no" ones are a bit more context-dependent. For example, no would be a slightly disconcerting answer to "is there anything to prevent random people walking in off the street and adulterating our products?", but would be the "right" answer for "In the past 12 months, have there been any instances of people gaining unauthorised access to facilities and/or products?".
Some of these may therefore indicate areas that you possibly need to look at improving / changing, but again that depends entirely on the nature and context of the question ;)
Add the No's to a gap analysis or internal audit corrections or something, and when denied the money for security and better cameras etc its at least documented you tried, and you have another though less effective means to monitor etc..