Tag Archives: lessons learned

FDA

FDA Expects to Release Blueprint for New Era of Smarter Food Safety Soon

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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FDA

On October 1, Frank Yiannas will be the keynote speaker for the 2020 Food Safety Consortium Virtual Series || The series takes place during the weeks of September 3 through December 17Expect the much-anticipated blueprint for FDA’s New Era of Food Safetyto be released soon. The agency has not provided an exact date but in an update prior to the July 4th holiday, FDA stated it would be rolled it out “in the coming weeks”.

“The challenges we’ve faced during the pandemic have made it clear that the goals we set forth in the New Era blueprint are more important now than ever. Some of them, like enhanced traceability, are particularly meaningful in light of recent events,” Frank Yiannas, FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy and Response, stated in an agency consumer update. “What we have learned from the pandemic is that we’re on the right track with the New Era of Smarter Food Safety. The steps that we’ll take will prepare us to protect the safety of our food supply, no matter what challenges we face.”

In addition to the focus on emerging digital technologies, traceability in the supply chain, ensuring safety in the home delivery of food (e-commerce), and food safety culture, FDA will be including the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the blueprint structure.

Food Safety Consortium

2020 Food Safety Consortium Converted to Virtual Event Series

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Food Safety Consortium

With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to take a toll on live events, Innovative Publishing Company, Inc. has made the careful decision to convert the Food Safety Consortium, which historically has taken place in Schaumburg, IL, to a virtual conference. This move takes into consideration Illinois’ COVID-19 plan to reopen its economy, which is a Five-Phase Plan. Phase 5 occurs when groups larger than 50 (conferences and conventions specifically mentioned) will be allowed. The state enters Phase 5 only when a vaccine or an effective treatment is in place. The decision to take the Food Safety Consortium virtual is based on the Illinois reopening plan, along with considering the safety and well being of staff, attendees, speakers and sponsors.

Every Thursday, beginning on September 10 through November 12, the Food Safety Consortium Virtual Conference Series will host two presentations and two sponsored Tech Talks, followed by a panel discussion with attendees. Food Safety Tech is the media sponsor.

“This will be much more than a bunch of webinars. We are excited to offer a virtual platform that facilitates greater human interaction,” says Rick Biros, president of Innovative Publishing and director of the Food Safety Consortium. “Whether it’s a random connection in a hotel lobby, a stroll by a booth at a trade show, or a seat next to a new friend in a learning session, we recognize that human connection is important for events. That’s why we’ve invested in new tools for the FSC Conference Virtual Platform to ensure those discussions, discoveries and connections can go on whether our event is offline or online. The new platform provides attendees with a way to keep track of live sessions, connect with sponsors and engage with peers, all in a familiar way. It will also include an event App that offers interactive features.”

Frank Yiannas, FDA deputy commissioner for food policy and response, will remain a keynote speaker, with the new presentation date to be announced.

Call for Abstracts

We are accepting abstracts for participation in the Food Safety Consortium Virtual Series. On the Submit an Abstract page, select Food Safety Consortium 2020 in the drop-down menu.

Categories include:

  • Food safety
  • Food defense
  • Food integrity
  • Food safety supply chain management
  • Lessons learned COVID-19
  • Regulatory compliance
  • Facility design
  • C-suite executive forum

Tech Talk Sponsorship

Companies that are interested in sponsoring a 10-minute technical presentation during the series can also submit their abstract through the portal. For pricing information, contact IPC Sales Director RJ Palermo.

Innovative Publishing has also converted the Cannabis Quality Conference to a virtual event. More information is available at Cannabis Industry Journal.

About Food Safety Tech

Food Safety Tech publishes news, technology, trends, regulations, and expert opinions on food safety, food quality, food business and food sustainability. We also offer educational, career advancement and networking opportunities to the global food industry. This information exchange is facilitated through ePublishing, digital and live events.

About the Food Safety Consortium Conference and Expo (The live event)

Food companies are concerned about protecting their customers, their brands and their own company’s financial bottom line. The term “Food Protection” requires a company-wide culture that incorporates food safety, food integrity and food defense into the company’s Food Protection strategy.

The Food Safety Consortium is an educational and networking event for Food Protection that has food safety, food integrity and food defense as the foundation of the educational content of the program. With a unique focus on science, technology and compliance, the “Consortium” enables attendees to engage in conversations that are critical for advancing careers and organizations alike. Delegates visit with exhibitors to learn about cutting-edge solutions, explore three high-level educational tracks for learning valuable industry trends, and network with industry executives to find solutions to improve quality, efficiency and cost effectiveness in the evolving food industry.

Lessons Learned from Intentional Adulteration Vulnerability Assessments (Part III)

By Frank Pisciotta, Spence Lane
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Food defense is the effort to protect food from intentional acts of adulteration where there is an intent to cause harm. Like counterterrorism laws for many industries, the IA rule, which established a compliance framework for regulated facilities, requires that these facilities prepare a security plan—in this case, a food defense plan—and conduct a vulnerability assessment (VA) to identify significant vulnerabilities that, if exploited, might cause widescale harm to public health, as defined by the FDA. Lessons learned during the conduct of food defense vulnerability and risk assessments and the preparation of the required food defense plan are detailed throughout this three-part series of articles. Part I of this series addressed the importance of a physical security expert, insider threat detection programs, actionable process steps (APS) and varying approaches to a VA. Part II reviewed access, subject matter experts, mitigation strategies and community drinking water. This final article reviews broad mitigation strategies, feasibility assessments, food defense plans, partial ingredient security and the “Three Element” approach through more lessons learned from assessments conducted for the largest and most complex global food and beverage facilities, but which can also be applied to the smaller facilities that are currently in the process of readying for the next deadline of July 26.

Lesson 14: When the final rule was released, the concept of using broad mitigation strategies was eliminated. That notwithstanding and realizing that many companies seek to operate at a stricter standard for food defense with a clear focus on brand protection, versus only those process steps that potentially could result in a “wide scale public health impact.” Broad or facility-wide mitigation strategies should not be abandoned, but are less likely to get you a lot of credit for IA compliance. Including existing food safety prerequisite programs (PRP), programs and practices that are put in place to maintain a sanitary environment and minimize the risk of introducing a food safety hazard, can, in some cases, also be included as security mitigation. PRP’s with slight modifications can also contribute to a good “food defense” posture. For example, one PRP addresses hazardous chemicals and toxic substances. In some cases, non-food grade substances that could result in product contamination (not necessarily wide-scale public health impact) might be available to a disgruntled insider. It is obvious companies are concerned about contaminants being brought into the plants, but please do not overlook contaminants that are already there and ensure that they are properly secured when not in use.

Other facility-wide programs (broad mitigation) that contribute to effective food defense might include site perimeter or building security, visitor and contractor management, pre-employment background checks, employee security awareness and food defense training and sanitation chemical management.

Lesson 15: If you are using the three elements approach (Guidance Chapter 2 Section G) or the hybrid approach (Guidance Chapter 2 Section H), you will be required to make an assessment on feasibility. In the early VA’s conducted, prior to the second installment of the guidance in March of 2019, feasibility was essentially an all or nothing proposition. One could argue that a judgment call was required as to whether an intentional adulteration incident could be accomplished given the inherent conditions. Those conditions might include a lot of coworkers who might be able to observe and serve as witnesses to deter the act. With the release of the second installment of the guidance from the FDA, a new tool was made available which would allow food and beverage companies to run a calculation and make a more accurate prediction of how much of an unnamed “representative contaminant” which is assumed to be highly lethal and heat stable it might take to contaminate a product batch. Typically, the larger the batch size, the higher the quantity of the “representative contaminant” would be required to achieve a lethal dose (LD) in a serving size. So, to provide an additional level of validation with identified actionable process steps, the use of the LD calculation might be considered to provide more realistic insight into the feasibility element. For instance, if it would require one hundred pounds of the “representative contaminant,” you might feel justified in concluding that it is not realistic to get that amount of contaminant into the batch at the process step and rule out the point, step or procedure as an APS. This can save money and ensure limited food defense resources can be channeled to the areas where legitimate risk can be reduced.

Lesson 16: After an APS is identified, sites will need to determine, as the rule states, whether the existing “mitigation strategies can be applied…to significantly minimize or prevent the significant vulnerability.” Simply stated, what is in place today for food safety, and the broad-based security measures in use, may or may not be enough when you consider an insider motivated to contaminate the product. The FDA’s mitigation strategies database may offer some insights into additional food defense measures to consider. Where additional mitigation strategies are identified, from the time of completion of the VA until a site’s regulatory compliance deadline arrives (next one is July 26, 2020), that change must be incorporated into the food defense plan and fully implemented. We recommend that a site make a list of new mitigation strategies after the VA is complete for tracking purposes during the implementation phase. No mitigation strategies should be included in the food defense plan that are not fully implemented and where records cannot be adequately produced.

Lesson 17: In the second installment of the guidance, the concept of partial ingredients was introduced. The key activity types (KAT) of secondary ingredients is now considered to include the storage of partially used, open containers of secondary ingredients where the tamper-evident packaging has been breached. Tamper evident tape looked to have promising benefits, but several of our clients have abandoned the use of this mitigation strategy, which has been proven repeatedly to be defeated without detection. It appears that using containers that can be secured with numbered seals might be a better option and even better if the seals would be metal detectable in the event one went astray in a product stream.

Lesson 18: Food defense plan unification. Facilities regulated under the IA rule are likely to already have a food defense plan for other initiates such as SQF or BRC. The IA Rule is not unlike other counter-terrorism regulations in potential to create challenges to meet voluntary and regulatory requirements without having multiple food defense plans. The IA Rule based on its modeling after HACCP creates some very specific requirements in terms of how data needs to be presented and records maintained. Sites may be doing other things to support food defense, and one strategy that might keep auditors in their lane would be to include any non-IA Rule food defense content (e.g., for SQF or BRC) in an appendix to the IA Rule Food Defense Plan.

Lesson 19: Under the VA method the FDA refers to as “the “Three Element” approach, suggestion is made in the guidance released in March 2019 that regulated facilities might consider creating stratified categories for each element of public health impact, degree of physical access and ability of the attacker to successfully contaminate product. This is asking regulated facilities to engineer their own vulnerability assessment methodology. It is our opinion that this is asking a lot from a food and beverage facility and that creating categories for each element (e.g., refer to Table 3 on page 54) will extend the time it takes to complete a vulnerability assessment, create a lot more uncertainty in the process and does not necessarily help companies to identify the areas where intentional adulteration risk is highest.

Conclusion

Organizations who have yet to execute vulnerability assessments (due July 26) or those who have already completed vulnerability assessments who may wish to reflect back on their existing VAs in an effort to eliminate unnecessary APS’s should find these strategies helpful in focusing limited resources to the areas where they can have the greatest effect. Since the initiation of this article series, the FDA has released its third installment of the guidance. Once we reflect on this new installment, we will address our thoughts in a future article.

Lessons Learned from Intentional Adulteration Vulnerability Assessments (Part II)

By Frank Pisciotta, Spence Lane
No Comments

Food defense is the effort to protect food from intentional acts of adulteration where there is an intent to cause harm. Like counterterrorism laws for many industries, the IA rule, which established a compliance framework for regulated facilities, requires that these facilities prepare a security plan—in this case, a food defense plan—and conduct a vulnerability assessment (VA) to identify significant vulnerabilities that, if exploited, might cause widescale harm to public health, as defined by the FDA. Lessons learned during the conduct of food defense vulnerability and risk assessments and the preparation of the required food defense plan are detailed throughout this three-part series of articles. Part I of this series addressed the importance of a physical security expert, insider threat detection programs, actionable process steps (APS) and varying approaches to a VA. To further assist facilities with reviewing old or conducting new VAs, Part II will touch on access, subject matter experts, mitigation strategies and community drinking water through more lessons learned from assessments conducted for the largest and most complex global food and beverage facilities.

Lesson 6: Utilization of Card Access. The FDA costs of implementing electronic access control, as reported in the Regulatory Impact Analysis document (page 25) are shown in Table 1.

Average Cost Per Covered Facility Initial Recurring Total Annualized
Prohibit after hours key drop deliveries of raw materials $ $1070 $1070
Electronic access controls for employees $1122 $82 $242
Secured storage of finished products $1999 $– $285
Secured storage of raw materials $3571 $– $508
Cameras with video recording in storage rooms $3144 $– $448
Peer monitoring of access to exposed product (not used) $47 $1122 $1129
Physical inspection of cleaned equipment $– $303 $22
Prohibit staff from bringing personal equipment $157 $– $22
Total $9993 $1455 $2878
Table I. Costs of Mitigation

In our opinion, these costs may be underreported by a factor of five or more. A more realistic number for implementing access control at an opening is $5,000 or more depending on whether the wire needs to be run in conduit, which it typically would. While there are wireless devices available, food and beverage organizations should be mindful that the use of wireless devices may in some cases result in the loss of up to 50% of electronic access control benefits. This happens because doors using this approach may not result in monitored-for-alarm conditions, such as when doors are held open too long or are forced open. Some wireless devices may be able to report these conditions, but not always as reliable as hardwired solutions. Using electronic access control without the door position monitoring capability is a mistake. From a cost standpoint, even a wireless access control device would likely be upwards of $2,000 per opening.

Lesson 7: In the interest of time, and in facilities with more complex processes (which increases the work associated with the VA), plan to have quality, food safety and physical security personnel present for the duration of the VA. But also bring in operational specialists to assess each point, step or procedure for the respective operational areas. You may wish to have a quick high-level briefing for each operational group when it’s their turn to deliberate on their portion of the manufacturing operation. Proper planning can get a hybrid style VA done in one-and-a-half to three days maximum for the most complex of operations.

Lesson 8: Conduct a thorough site tour during the assessment process; do not limit your vulnerability activity to a conference room. Both internal and external tours are important in the assessment process by all members of the team. The external tour is needed to evaluate existing measures and identify vulnerabilities by answering questions such as:

  • Is the perimeter maintained?
  • Are cameras pointed correctly?
  • Are doors secure?
  • Are vehicles screened?
  • Are guards and guard tours effective?
  • Internal tours are important to validate documented HACCP points, steps or procedures.A tour also helps to validate process steps that are in multiple parts and may need to be further assessed as a KAT, for public health impact, accessibility and feasibility or to identify issues that have become “invisible” to site employees which might serve a security purpose.
  • Properly conducted tours measure the effectiveness of a variety of potential internal controls such as:
    • Access control
    • Visitor controls
    • Use of identification measures
    • Use of GMP as a security measure (different colors, access to GMP equipment and clean rooms)
    • Effectiveness of buddy systems
    • Employee presence

Lesson 9: Do not forget the use of community drinking water in your processes. This is an easy way to introduce a variety of contaminants either in areas where water is being treated on site (even boiler rooms) or where water may sit in a bulk liquid tank with accessibility through ladders and ports. In our experience, water is listed on about half of the HACCP flow charts we assessed in the VA process.

Lesson 10: Some mitigation strategies may exist but may not be worth taking credit for in your food defense plan. Due to the record keeping requirements being modeled after HACCP, monitoring, corrective action and verification records are required for each mitigation strategy associated with an APS. This can often create more work than it is worth or result in a requirement to create a new form or record. Appropriate mitigation strategies should always be included in your food defense plan, but sometimes it produces diminishing returns if VA facilitators try to get too creative with mitigation strategies. Also, it is usually better to be able to modify an existing process or form than having to create a new one.

Lesson 11: In cases of multi-site assessments, teams at one plant may reach a different conclusion than another plant on whether an identical point, set or procedure is an APS. This is not necessarily a problem, as there may be different inherent conditions from one site to the next. However, we strongly suggest that there be a final overall review from a quality control standpoint to analyze such inconsistencies adjudicate accordingly where there is no basis for varying conclusions.

Lesson 12: If there is no person formally responsible for physical security at your site, you may have a potential gap in a critical subject matter area. Physical security measures will make at least a partial contribution to food defense. Over 30 years, we have seen many organizations deploy electronic access control, video surveillance and lock and key control systems ineffectively, which provides a false sense of security and results in unidentified vulnerability. It is as important to select the right physical security measures to deploy, but also critical to administer them in a manner that meets the intended outcome. Most companies do not have the luxury of a full-time security professional, but someone at the plant needs to be provided with a basic level of competency in physical security to optimize your food defense posture. We have developed several online training modules that can help someone who is new to security on key food defense processes and security system administration.

Lesson 13: As companies move into ongoing implementation and execution of the mitigation strategies, it is important to check that your mitigation strategies are working correctly. You will be required to have a monitoring component, correction action and verification intended for compliance assurance. However, one of the most effective programs we recommend for our clients’ food defense and physical security programs is the penetration test. The penetration test is intended to achieve continuous improvement when the program is regularly challenged. The Safe Quality Food (SQF) Institute may agree with this and now requires facilities that are SQF certified to challenge their food defense plan at least once annually. We believe that frequency should be higher. Simple challenge tests can be conducted in 10 minutes or less and provide substantial insight into whether your mitigation strategies are properly working or whether they represent food defense theater. For instance, if a stranger were sent through the plant, how long would it take for employees to recognize and either challenge or report the condition? Another test might include placing a sanitation chemical in the production area at the wrong time. Would employees recognize, remove and investigate that situation? Challenge tests are easy high impact activities; and regardless of the outcome, can be used to raise awareness and reinforce positive behaviors.

Whether training a new security officer, reviewing existing security plans or preparing for an upcoming vulnerability assessment (due July 26, 2020), these lessons learned from experienced security consultants should help to focus efforts and eliminate unnecessary steps at your facility. The final installment in this series will address broad mitigation strategies, the “Three Element” approach and food defense plan unification. Read the final installment of this series on Lessons Learned from Intentional Adulteration Vulnerability Assessments, Part III.

Mark Your Calendars: Pathogens Web Seminar on December 5

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Next month Food Safety Tech is hosting a complimentary virtual event, “Pathogens: Getting to the Source, Prevention Strategies that Work“, which takes on Thursday, December 5 from 1–4 pm ET. The web seminar brings together subject matter experts who will share their perspectives on pathogen contamination, smarter facility design and operational hygiene, and important prevention strategies.

Speakers include:

  • Larry Cohen, Principal Microbiologist, Food Safety Department, TreeHouse Foods, Inc.
  • David Pirrung, Owner, DCP Consulting
  • Dave Evanson, Technical Consultant, Merieux NutriSciences

Attendees will have the opportunity to ask speakers questions during the live Q&A session that follows each presentation. Register now for this special Pathogens Web Seminar.

This event is sponsored by Millipore Sigma and Bayer Digital Pest Management.

Lessons Learned from Intentional Adulteration Vulnerability Assessments (Part I)

By Frank Pisciotta, Spence Lane
No Comments

Food defense is the effort to protect food from intentional acts of adulteration where there is an intent to cause harm. Like counterterrorism laws for many industries, the IA rule, which established a compliance framework for regulated facilities, requires that these facilities prepare a security plan—in this case, a food defense plan—and conduct a vulnerability assessment (VA) to identify significant vulnerabilities that, if exploited, might cause widescale harm to public health, as defined by the FDA. Lessons learned during the conduct of food defense vulnerability and risk assessments and the preparation of the required food defense plan are detailed throughout this three-part series of articles. Part I of this series is intended to assist facilities that have not yet conducted vulnerability assessments or wish to review those already conducted, by leveraging lessons learned from assessments conducted for the largest and most complex global food and beverage facilities.

Lesson 1: VA outcomes are greatly enhanced if a physical security professional is consulted. In support of this contention, there are several physical security mitigation strategies, which can be employed to support a food defense program, that are frequently under-utilized and are not optimally managed by non-security staff. Also, the FDA seems to promote the use of cameras even though this equipment is unlikely to prevent an incident of intentional adulteration. For organizations that choose to use video surveillance, a competent security professional can help organizations engineer and operate video surveillance for maximum benefits and to meet challenging record-keeping requirements when this mitigation strategy is included in a food defense plan.

Lesson 2: Given the focus by the FDA on the insider, a formal insider threat detection program is highly recommended. Trying to promote the common, “See Something, Say Something” strategy may not be enough. For example, if employees are not clearly told what to look for in terms of uniform requirements, how to identify persons who do not belong or changes to a coworker’s baseline behavior, which may indicate moving toward a path to violence or sabotage, then “See Something, Say Something” may end up being no more than a catchy slogan.

A key element of an insider threat detection program is the completion of effective background checks for all persons who will be allowed in the facility unescorted. This includes temporary employees and contractors. A common theme in many of the recent, serious intentional adulteration incidents was that the person responsible was involved in some sort of grievance observable to coworkers and supervisors. In all insider threat detection programs, the grievance becomes an important trip wire. The Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute has published a document titled, “Common Sense Guide to Mitigating Insider Threats, Sixth Edition”. In this document is some particularly helpful guidance that can be used to stand up an insider threat detection program, but this is an effort that can take some time to fully implement.

Lesson 3: The FDA has made it abundantly clear that they believe the focus for the food and beverage industry should be the radicalized insider. A closer look at all the recently publicized contamination events suggests that there are other profiles that need to be considered. A good foundational model for building profiles of potential offenders can be found in the OSHA definitions for workplace violence offenders, which has been expanded to address ideologically based attacks. Table I applies those descriptions to the food and beverage industry, with an asterisk placed by those offender profiles that exist in recent incidents and discussed later in the text.

Class OSHA Workplace Violence Offender Description Motivation Translated to the Food and Beverage Industry
1 The offender has no legitimate relationship to the business or its employee(s). Rather, the violence is incidental to another crime, such as robbery, shoplifting, trespassing or seeking social media fame. Behavioral Health Patient *
Social Media Fame Seeker *
Copycat *
Extortion *
Economic motivation *
2 The violent person has a legitimate relationship with the business—for example, the person is a customer, client, patient, student, or inmate—and becomes violent while being served by the business, violence falls into this category. My load isn’t ready, you are costing me money
3 The offender of this type of violence could be a current employee or past employee of the organization who attacks or threatens other employee(s) in the workplace. I am upset with a coworker and adulterate to create problems for that person *
I am upset with the company and adulterate as retribution and to harm the brand *
Youthful stupidity
I am not paid enough *
4 The offender may or may not have a relationship with the business but has a personal (or perceived personal) relationship with the victim. I am upset with an intimate partner/ coworker and adulterate to create problems for that person
5 Ideological workplace violence is directed at an organization, its people, and/or property for ideological, religious or political reasons. The violence is perpetrated by extremists and value-driven groups justified by their beliefs. Radicalized Insider
Table I. A description of OSHA workplace violence offenders and how it can be applied to the F&B industry.

A supermarket in Michigan recalled 1,700 lbs. of ground beef after 111 people fell ill with nicotine poisoning. The offender, an employee, mixed insecticide into the meat to get his supervisor in trouble. In Australia, the entire strawberry industry was brought to its knees after a disgruntled supervisor “spiked” strawberries with needles. There were more than 230 copycat incidents impacting many companies. A contract employee in Japan, apparently disgruntled over his low pay, sprayed pesticide on a frozen food processing line resulting in illnesses to more than 2,000 people. A contract worker upset with a union dispute with the company at a food manufacturing plant videoed himself urinating on the production line, then uploaded the video to the Internet. Be cognizant of any grievances in the workplace and increase monitoring or take other proactive steps to reduce the risk of intentional adulteration.

Lesson 4: The IA Rule requires that every point, step and procedure be analyzed to determine if it is an actionable process step (APS). The Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point flow charts are a good starting point to comply with this element of the law but cannot be counted on completely to achieve the standard of analyzing every point, step or procedure. Critical thinking and persons familiar with the production process need to be involved to ensure that no steps are missed. Oftentimes companies modify the HACCP flow diagrams after a VA.

Lesson 5: The FDA states in the second installment of guidance (here’s the full copy) to the industry that, “There are many possible approaches to conducting a VA. You may choose an approach based on considerations such as the time and resources available and the level of specificity desired. You have the flexibility to choose any VA approach, as long as your VA contains each required component (21 CFR 121.130).”

The FDA further states that the Key Activity Type, or KAT method, is an appropriate method for conducting a VA because it reflects consideration of the three required elements and the inside attacker. Using this methodology alone, however, can result in substantially more APS’s, which might otherwise be ruled out for practical purposes such as a lack of accessibility or a lack of feasibility to contaminate the product at a point, step or procedure. We have experienced up to a 90% decline in APS’s by utilizing another FDA recommended assessment approach, the hybrid approach, which assesses each point, step or procedure as first whether it is a KAT. Then to qualify as an APS, it must also trigger positively for public health impact, accessibility and feasibility to contaminate the product.

Organizations who have yet to execute vulnerability assessments (due July 26, 2020) or who may wish to reflect back on their existing VA’s in an effort to eliminate unnecessary APS’s should find these strategies helpful to focus limited resources to the areas where they can have the greatest effect. The next two articles in this series will cover more information on electronic access, the value of site tours, comparisons to drinking water security strategies, dealing with multi-site assessments and more. Read Part II of this series on intentional adulteration.