The U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) has published their proposed guidance to assess the vulnerabilities for food fraud.
This is a framework document that allows a company to assess the vulnerabilities of the food ingredient and to develop systems to help prevent food fraud.
The guidance is structured in three major steps of which the first two steps are designed to characterize the vulnerabilities of a food ingredient and the last step is designed to develop mitigation strategies.
Step 1: is the assessment of the contributing factors such as supply chain, audit strategy, supplier relationship, history of supplier quality and safety issues, susceptibility of quality assurance methods and specifications, testing frequency, fraud history, geopolitical considerations and economic anomalies.
Step 2: is the assessment of potential impacts such as food safety and economics.
Step 3: is the development of a mitigation strategy.
The public can comment on this document starting 31 December 2014 at the FCC Forum until March 31, 2015.