Food safety, defense and fraud comprise the three elements of food safety management system. Food defense and fraud needs to be given due importance because of wide scale public health harm, public panic, disruption of trade hurting the economy, company closures and associated loss of jobs. Food defense contributes to mitigation of potential risks in intentional contamination and food fraud. It encompasses a range of potential threats from relatively common tamper hoaxes to less probable terrorist attacks. Food defense requires diligence from regulators, industry, consumers and people. Developing comprehensive risk management systems to protect the food supply establishes a foundation for minimizing adverse public health and economic impacts and ultimately promotes food security and resilience. It is necessary to differentiate various terms in food management safety system, definitions of which are given below.

Definitions

Food adulteration

Food adulteration is an act of adding or mixing of poor quality, inferior, harmful, substandard, useless or unnecessary substances to food.

Food safety

It is the scientific process of handling, preparation and storage of food in ways that prevent unintentional/accidental contamination or adulteration of food.