This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Terror Through Food

Terror Through Food

As someone who was in New York City on 09/11/01, I saw the fear, death and destruction first hand.  It is something I will never forget.

The recent bombings at the Boston Marathon remind me of just how vulnerable our society is. Killing and maiming innocent people, especially children, with an exploding pressure cooker packed with nails and pieces of metal disturb me to the core. May that individual or the people responsible rot a slow death in hell.

What makes me really think after a horrific incident of terrorism, is how unprotected our vast food industry is. From the farm to a retail setting in some circumstances, our food chain is wide open for attack.

Find out what's happening in Tarrytown-Sleepy Hollowwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Several years ago I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to sit in on a lecture given by an FBI agent in counter-terrorism on food safety. He didn’t talk about some knuckle head not washing their hands after using the toilet, his discussion was on a global scale. He cited several domestic and international terrorist attempts through food. From purposely contaminating the local buffet with Salmonella, to developing genetically altered “Super Seeds” used to destroy produce crops, the actions of some of these individuals he described were aggressively pre-meditated. All it takes is some easily obtainable information from the internet, a little bit of cash and the strong desire to cause harm.

We as industry professionals must take that fact into consideration every day and implement the following basic precautionary measures:

Find out what's happening in Tarrytown-Sleepy Hollowwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

1)  Report suspicious activity.

2)  Keep areas secure. (Eg-electrical rooms and water supplies)

3)  Use visitor logs.

4)  Use employee identification tags.

5)  Prohibit personal items in food processing areas.

6)  Implement food defense training.

Finally, as the saying goes, “If you see something, say something”. In the hectic yet sometimes complacent food industry, this can make the difference in avoiding a potential disaster.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?