Any new idea to test the Food Defense Program?

Hi, last year I had a visitor enter my facility without supervision to test how my employees would react to the stranger. They eventually reported the unrecognizable visitor to a supervisor and completed the test. However, my auditor says this is not good enough. It was not a minor non-conformance but could be this year! So, does anybody else have any new ideas?

Did the auditor give you any tips? what they thought was wrong? Maybe they want to see a wider portion of the program tested.

For example:

• Stranger walks in and wanders around
• Stranger walks in and attempts to contaminate product
• Stranger attempts to gain access to outside storage vessels such as trailers or tanks
• Stranger on inbound load attempts to unload their truck themselves
• Employee purposely "contaminates" products
• "Customer" attempts to get your sales person to sell adulterated product
• "Vendor" attempts to get your buyer to purchase product knowing that there are dealbreaking issues with it

Those are some ideas, but I'm not sure all of them are feasible. It would help to know exactly why the auditor didn't accept it.

Was the entire breach documented. I've never had an auditor do that when presented with a forensic test document and documented analysis and car followup.

Did you doc it or just verbal it.

Hello !

 

We had an enveloppe sent without any return address with a paper inside saying that they shouldn't have opened it since it was a blank enveloppe and a product could have been in there.

 

We also placed a label on one of spices bag saying that it was Contaminated just to see if our employees would use them without reporting them.

 

Another example I was told was to place inside a box of a bulk item (not touching the product of course) a label saying it was anthrax or some other contaminant (we use ascorbic acid) and see if the employees would let us know before using it.

 

We used to do only the walk-in from a visitor, but our auditor told us it would be better to also test other areas. Specially since we were a small group (7 employees) so any stranger is easily spotted. 

 

Hope it helps !

Hello! Don´t forget to challenge your IT system

as also sth related to employees workwear....

 

:)
Leila

Now I'm intrigued. What the heck could you challenge relating to food defense for employee workwear?

Now I'm intrigued. What the heck could you challenge relating to food defense for employee workwear?

An employee comes into work with a t-shirt that says:

"Inside my pocket is a small bottle of bleach that I intend to use for nefarious purposes"

Jaja, good idea! However, my idea was the following: several companies have their employee workwear with the logo or so. Supervisors can check who shall be or not in each area based on a quick view of employee’s uniforms. A basic record to sign when they receive uniforms, and to give them back when they are not working any more is also an idea to have a mitigation measure. Then, an employee with a “fake uniform” could be also a way to challenge the food defense system.

I hope I made myself understand now
L

Unfortunately, we have some really antiquated auditor(s) in the all agencies (sry if this applies to you).

1. Do you have a plan? Does it work if you challenge it?

2. Is the process documented? That's it!

 

Had the same issue with an auditor; forklift maintenance tech showed up and didn't have proper identification. We flagged him, called the CO to verify his employment, work order status. Wrote up a challenge report. Auditor debited us. We appealed and won the point back after we did another challenge.