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December 10, 2007
In 2003 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) issued the Food and Cosmetic Security Preventive Measures Guidances. These documents were designed to be used as aids for several components of the food and cosmetic industry. The guidance documents could be used to identify the kinds of preventive measures that industry may take to minimize the risk that food and cosmetic products under their control would be subject to tampering or other malicious, criminal or terrorist actions. These guidance documents were designed to focus food and cosmetic industry operators' attention on each segment of the food and cosmetic products delivery system that is within their control, to minimize the risk of tampering or other malicious, criminal, or terrorist action at each segment.
The Agency received comments from industry and our stakeholders stating that these guidance documents were useful but that FDA should find a way to simplify the messages. With this in mind, FDA has made an attempt to simplify these documents by repackaging the information found in each guidance document into the Food Defense Self Assessment Tool. The information in each of the Food Defense Assessment Tools is the same information that is contained in each of the guidance documents issued in 2003, just in a more user friendly format. Each tool is available online and is attached as an appendix to its corresponding guidance document. Other than the addition of the tools, there is no new information in each of the guidance documents.
The Food and Cosmetic Security Preventive Measures Guidances and their associated Food Defense Self Assessment tools can be found on the CFSAN Food Defense and Terrorism Guidance page.
