Tentative food defense guidelines for food producers and processors in Japan

With increasing global interest in intentional food contamination, expert meetings have been held by the G8, while the U.S. government has proposed policies for preventing food terrorism and intentional contamination. However, Japan has no food defense policy, and some food companies are concerned about an impending terrorism and contamination crisis.

We developed a Food Defense Checklist for Food Producers and Processors and published the details on the website. We also developed tentative Food Defense Guidelines for Food Producers and Processors on the basis of the checklist. In this study, we tested the usability of the guidelines through a hearing survey regarding food plants. We also compared the checklist with the implementation manual for the approval system of Comprehensive Sanitation Management and Production Process (the Japanese equivalent of the HACCP).

We organized the comments gleaned from the hearing survey and provided a detailed explanation of the guidelines. As the HACCP has been adopted by Japanese food companies, we included both precautionary measures and the HACCP perspective in the explanation regarding the rapid dissemination of information.

The guidelines are useful for Japanese food companies, and it is important to disseminate knowledge on this topic and implement food defense measures.