How do you document and test your Food Defense Alert System?

Hello,

in IFS an appropriate alert system shall be defined and periodically tested for effectiveness.

I'm wondering if someone could give me an example of an alert system? How do you document testing?

Also, how do you test how well your food defense plan works?

Thank you!

I am not sure what IFS requires as to an alert system but I do know how testing food defense as we have done breach consulting with "Get out of Jail Letters." those were the fun assignments!

To do a food defense challenge -- get someone (a friend or contactor that no one at the company knows) and tell them their job is to attempt to breach your property, building, bypass your systems you have set up, etc - in general to gain access to areas your company is suppositly defending

Have that person document the entire exercise (body cam would be great for this) in forensic format.

Be sure to give the person a letter with your info on it in case your personnel call the police - we forgot this step on our first breach exercise of a bonded food warehouse in California! :(

I do Emergency Preparedness drill every 2 years by testing key supervisory personnel for emergency preparedness by providing them with written exam on Food Safety Emergency Action Plan

Hi, 

An easy example for an alert system to check if the FSMS system works appropriately, is warning system (bell) which ringing when the temperature decrease in cold room, refrigerator or freezer in a meat production factory.

You are able to make document the temperature changes through a temperature recording chip which record temperature fluctuations and transfer data to a PC and send warning message (ringing bell) when temperature changes is out of defined range.

Regards,

Hedayat  

We received a NC for not documenting the test, the auditor was looking for someone not related to the company to gain access to the facility. We documented a review of customers, contractors & others attempting to gain access and the reactions by staff in those areas & whether it was effective or not (ie. delivery driver attempted to enter facility but was asked to wait in truck while load was received).

Don't forget the in house disgruntled employee what is the likelihood of an employee tampering on the production line?