Local Health District Integrated Food Defense and Training in Large Retail Food Establishments

The Cuyahoga County Board of Health (CCBH) is the public health authority for a population of 823,000 located in Northeast Ohio within the Greater Cleveland Metropolitan area. The purpose of this project is to integrate food defense preparedness within our mandated food protection program to increase readiness within large retail grocery store chains. Grocery stores chains serve as the common food source for most residents and businesses in communities and can implement new policies in many stores concurrently. Food defense implementation in these facilities would be rapid, and reap benefits by protecting the food supply for all segments of society. This will be achieved by assessing vulnerabilities within these facilities during mandated inspections, and collaborating with industry representatives to create a culture of food defense preparedness. Grocery store executives will be invited to a stakeholders meeting to review draft food defense policies and placards designed to embed food defense mitigation strategies into their operations. Initial food defense preparedness assessments will occur during unannounced mandated food safety inspections of 55 grocery chain stores 25,000 ft2 and over. Weaknesses will be recorded within grocery stores on a modified Food and Drug Administration (FDA) self-assessment tool. At the conclusion of the initial field assessments, data recorded on the assessment tool will be analyzed for food defense weaknesses. The CCBH will then use the analysis to design customized food defense toolkits containing mitigation policies and placards to implement into the operation of each chain’s retail facility. Follow up food defense preparedness assessments will occur at each facility and yield pre- and post- toolkit implementation results. Targeted food defense trainings will occur at facilities below acceptable standards so employees can gain real-time awareness of their food protection vulnerabilities. Our “Complete Food Protection” public awareness campaign will reinforce the project by publicly recognizing those grocery stores demonstrating exemplary food defense and food safety practices, as well as by directing the public to CCBH’s food protection webpages. To benefit the nation, the tools and techniques developed will be easily replicated and widely available through CCBH’s website and FDA resources.