Resources
Free Food Defense Awareness Training (20-30 minutes, online)
Food Defense 101 has been developed by FDA to provide a resource to enable preparedness against an intentional attack against the nation's food supply. This course provides an overview of food defense and is designed to stimulate discussion of food defense within the industry. Specifically, this food defense awareness course is designed for individuals at actionable process steps and their supervisors to introduce food defense concepts and explain the importance of proper implementation of mitigation strategies designed to reduce significant vulnerabilities at the process step where they work.
The FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act rule: Mitigation Strategies to Protect Food Against Intentional Adulteration (21 CFR Part 121) (IA Rule) requires that covered facilities develop and implement a food defense plan that protects the facility’s most vulnerable points from acts of intentional adulteration intended to cause wide scale public health harm. The points in a facilities operation that have these significant vulnerabilities are called “actionable process steps”. According the IA rule, individuals assigned to work at actionable process steps and their supervisors, are required to receive training in food defense awareness (21 CFR 121.4(b)(2)). This “Food Defense Awareness for the Intentional Adulteration Rule” is designed specifically for those individuals and will meet the food defense awareness training requirement within the IA rule. It is important to note that the training requirement in the IA rule is flexible, and individuals may choose this training or a similar food defense awareness training to satisfy this requirement.