From the Board: Putting the Plan into Action

In the last issue, Phillips Foods Director of Quality Assurance Bobby Love discussed establishing yourself as the food protection expert by becoming a reliable source, building resources and sharing expertise within your company. Food defense is a vital aspect of a complete food protection program for any processing plant, not only for protection of your customers and your brand, but also the entire food supply chain. To ensure your program is the best it can be:

1. Develop a defense program based on an assessment of your plant’s individual needs and vulnerabilities.
Identify as many hazards as possible through cooperative brainstorming while assessing the risk. There are many tools available to processing plants, with two of the most widely used programs originating with the United States military:
• Operational Risk Management (ORM) was created by the Air Force and adapted for Food Safety.  To increase operational effectiveness by anticipating hazards and reducing the potential for loss, ORM is a six-step plan through which to: (1) Identify the hazards; (2) Asses the Risk; (3) Analyze Risk Control Measures; (4) Make Control Decisions; (5) Implement Risk Control; (6) Supervise and Review. The purpose of ORM is to minimize risks to acceptable levels, while gaining more effective use of resources, reducing mishaps and improving food safety and security. (A good overview of Operational Risk Management is available at www.ohioagriculture.gov/foodsafety/curr/security/food-ppt-foodsafetysecurity-100203_files/frame.htm.)
• CARVER + Shock originated as a miltary offensive targeting prioritization tool, which has been adapted by FDA for Food Defense and Terrorism in the food industry. The six attributes of CARVER are assessments of:
- Criticality - measure of public health and economic impacts of an attack
- Accessibility - ability to physically access and egress from target
- Recuperability - ability of system to recover from an attack
- Vulnerability - ease of accomplishing attack
- Effect - amount of direct loss from an attack as measured by loss in production
- Recognizability - ease of identifying target
with the seventh attribute, Shock, added to assess the combined health, economic and psychological impacts of an attack within the food industry.
Use of the CARVER + Shock assessment tool enables a plant to think like an attacker and identify the most attractive targets; determine the most vulnerable points in their infrastructure; then focus resources on protecting the most susceptible points in their system.
(Further information on CARVER + Shock and a free downloadable software tool are available from the FDA at www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/vltcarv.html.)

2. To gain buy-in from the executive boardroom to the plant floor, sell the benefits of your program and promote company ownership.
• When presenting the program, include the issues, solutions, benefits and drawbacks.
• Substantiate your reasoning with facts, occurrences, persons and contact information. Reference literature sources with author and page numbers or complete Internet address, and, particularly when using Internet sources, always ensure they are reputable.
• Stay with the facts, encourage and lead your audience to explore the possibilities.
• Never commit or promise what cannot be delivered. Your integrity and reputation must stay intact for future critical issue and the solution identification.
• Rule over your emotions and passions in all situations. Never bet with your heart.
• Understand your audience and the experience and viewpoints they bring to the table. 
• When writing your Crisis Management, Recall and Food Defense Plans, include an active and ongoing role for members of the Executive Boardroom to ensure their ownership in your Food Protection Programs.

3. Ensure successful initiation, implementation and a maximum shelf life of your vital programs
• To ensure you are not just throwing money at plant problems, map out the entire evolution of the changes your program will bring.
• Exhaust all available in-house options before going outside. The most expensive answers are not always the best.
• Lead your staff and other assigned personnel with the understanding that while you may delegate authority, you may never delegate responsibility.
• Source and investigate all options according to performance, cost and service. I have learned that companies get only what they pay for, but my responsibility is to ensure that they do get everything they paid for.
• When presenting a proposal, always walk through the entire document – soup to nuts. Then, once you have sold and implemented the program, make a practice of regularly review for enhancements, modifications and redirection when needed.
• Admit your shortcomings and errors and make immediate corrections. As leaders, we must be willing to ask for help and accept what is offered to us.

As I stated in part I of this column: Food protection is all of our responsibility; accepting ownership, promoting food safety and defense and sharing expertise is our challenge. Individuals and companies across the U.S. have made great strides in furthering food safety and defense. It is now up to us to move from our individual viewpoints, share our hard work and disseminate all that we have learned at every opportunity that we have. It is a great contribution when we commit ourselves to true expertise.

The author is global quality control manager, Phillips Foods, Baltimore, and a member of QA’s Advisory Board.