PAS 96 - Food and Drink Defence

Defending your food and agri-food products is essential to your business’ reputation and survival. The PAS 96:2014 Guide to protecting and defending food and drink from deliberate attack is the first standard to holistically address potential threats and mitigation of deliberate attacks on a food system, process or product.

Food safety management systems are focused on the prevention of accidental contamination. However a deliberate attack on your organization, operation, process or product may bypass food safety protocols – getting past even the most rigorous systems. PAS 96 covers deliberate attacks and addresses specific threats including:

• Extortion
• Malicious contamination
• Cybercrime
• Espionage
• Economically motivated adulteration
• Counterfeiting

To address these types of attacks, PAS 96 introduces Threat Assessment Critical Control Points (TACCP); a risk management framework closely aligned with the methodology of HACCP. Application of the PAS 96:2014 standard will guide your organization through the Threat Assessment Critical Control Point (TACCP) methodology to:

• Identify potential types of threats and attackers
• Prioritise threats to be addressed
• Determine critical controls required to mitigate threats
• Add rigour to incident response strategies to strengthen food protection arrangements

TACCP should be used by food organizations as a part of a broad risk management strategy to:

• Reduce the likelihood of a deliberate attack
• Reduce the impact of an attack on your food business

Reassure stakeholders about the safety of your production and supply chain

The concept of food defence has become a key due diligence expectation for many organizations in the food supply chain. It’s promoted by GFSI and retailers standards and is an essential customer requirement of several multinational food companies. PAS 96:2014 TACCP applies to any food business and at all points in the food supply chain, complementing existing business risk management and incident management processes.

Certification to PAS 96:2014 will demonstrate your commitment to a preventative, risk-based food defence plan with the added benefits of:

• Recognition to globally recognized TACCP principles for food defence
• Providing a systematic methodology to effectively identify and manage threats to food and drink from deliberate attack
• Showing your commitment to food defence, providing increased brand protection and confidence to your customers
• Promoting the review and continual improvement of incident response protocols and food defence strategies
• Consistent application across international sites, facilitating internal benchmarking and strategic risk management 

As there is no prescriptive way that you must assess food defence, the certification criteria for PAS 96:2014 are based on intent rather than prescriptive requirements. This allows you to determine your organizational and operational threats and how they’re managed in a food defence plan that’s specific to your situation. 

The first step to certification to PAS 96:2014 is to form a TACCP team to systematically evaluate the potential threats and likely attackers to your organization, operations, processes and product. The methodology you choose will depend on the context of your industry, location, size and complexity of your organization and the nature of your product and process.

Once potential threats have been identified, any suitable risk assessment tool can be applied to determine significant or priority threats. Like HACCP, significant threats will be managed through the introduction and implementation of specific control measures for materials and products, purchasing, processes, premises and distribution networks to mitigate or reduce the impact of the threat. The threat assessment and control strategy will form the basis of the food defence plan, supplemented by incident response protocols documented as part of the overall food protection or food defence plan. 

Whether you want to demonstrate your due diligence, get ahead of your competitors or meet new GFSI expectations, certifying to the PAS 96:2014 can drive meaningful change in your organization. From an initial introduction to the standard through to training and certification, no matter how far along you are, BSI can support your journey. Want to know more about the requirements of the standard, the steps to certification or how BSI is here to help? 

You'll learn about the TACCP methodology and how to apply the intent of the standard to reduce the threats to your organization, operation, process or product. As TACCP has a different focus to HACCP, input from different disciplines in your organization will be required including senior management, security, human resources, procurement and quality. Ideally, all TACCP team members would be trained to understand the types of threats posed to their business and how to systematically apply the TACCP methodology.