siliconindia | | May 20199Let's take an example to under-stand it better. Take a kitchen where a chef is preparing some of his cre-ation for his guests. He is alone in the kitchen, or the preparation area, and had to leave the kitchen for some reason mid-way, leaving the under-processed food unattended. This is a threat, where any intentional or unin-tentional contamination may occur, without the knowledge of the chef. Now, a disgruntled employee of the firm, who wants to teach the manage-ment a lesson, becomes the vulner-able factor, who may intentionally contaminate the food; again without the knowledge of the chef. Hence, you see how this threat and vulner-ability lead to food being contaminat-ed `intentionally', making it unsafe. In this case, you may think that a CCTV may be enough to keep an eye, but the answer is no. CCTV is a pre-ventive measure and not a corrective measure. In true sense, a CCTV could be preventive, when being monitored 24/7, and there are no blind spots in the room, so that you could stop any crime on the spot. Later, watching the footage after the crime has taken place has no meaning. In addition to this, we would need to understand the disgruntled individuals in the orga-nization, and the reasons behind it; so that the management could take a corrective action in analyzing the root cause for him to be disgruntled, to take further required actions. With this example, we could con-clude that having control measures is one thing and having the right imple-mentation of it is another. Hence, we need to think out-of-the-box to have a sound system to prevent food frauds and defend our food. We have a standard `PAS 96', that talks about Food Defence. Other ISO and GFSI standards today have incorporated the idea of TACCP and VACCP to have a sound Food safety in an orga-nization. Having a certificate of such standards alone would not prevent any food from being contaminated, but the right knowledge and imple-mentation will. We could see many more examples in the past where big brands have at times failed, despite of having all standards in place, with regular audits being done. We must look into such cases to take a lesson, to improve our future. I would end on this note with a saying that comes to my mind once said by Winston Churchill - "The far-ther backward you look, the farther forward you can see".
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