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Acronym Decoder

BRC and BRCGS: British Retail Consortium (superseded) and British Retail Consortium Global Standards.  The British Retail Consortium (BRC) is a group of British companies that published guidance and standards for food manufacturers, including a food safety standard that was also commonly referred to as BRC.  The standards owner is now known as BRCGS.

CoOL or COOL: Country of Origin Labelling.

EMA: Economically motivated adulteration or substitution. EMA is a subset of food fraud and is defined as the fraudulent, intentional substitution or addition of a substance, or dilution of a substance for the purposes of economic gain.  Non-EMA food fraud includes black market importation and trading of food and alcoholic beverages for the purposes of avoiding duty and taxes.

DEFRA: The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, a United Kingdom government department responsible for food production and standards as well as environmental and agricultural responsibilities.

FDA:  Food and Drugs Administration.  The FDA is the name of a regulatory body in a number of countries, including USA, Philippines and India.

FSA: Food Standards Agency, a United Kingdom government regulatory body.

FSMA: Sometimes pronounced ‘Fizzmah’.  Stands for Food Safety Modernisation Act (United States of America).

FSSC 22000: A food safety management system standard similar to ISO 22000 but with extra requirements incorporated to meet the requirements of a GFSI standard.

FSVP:  Standards for Foreign Supplier Verification Program.  It is part of the requirements of the US Food Safety Modernisation Act and applies to US importers of food and their suppliers.

GFSI: Global Food Safety Initiative.  The GFSI is a group of food companies whose mission is to harmonize, strengthen, and improve food safety management systems around the globe.  The GFSI provides direction and approval to organizations that create food safety management systems, so a GFSI-approved food safety standard is one that represents international best practice.  Well known GFSI standards include BRC, FSSC 22000 and SQF.

GMO: Genetically Modified Organism.

HACCP:  HACCP is a set of principles designed to control and prevent food safety risks during food production.  The principles of HACCP are codified (written down) by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).  Download the 2020 revision of the HACCP Code here.

HARCP: Hazard Analysis Risk-based Preventive Control.  HARCP = food safety as legislated by the United States.  This acronymn being used by some in the USA when talking about the requirements of the recently enacted Food Safety Modernisation Act (FSMA) in that country.  HARCP is claimed to differ from HACCP by including requirements for preventive controls.  Read more about HARCP here.

IA: Intentional Adulteration.  Within the US Food Safety Modernisation Act (FSMA), Intentional Adulteration specifically refers to malicious adulteration that is intended to cause widescale harm.  Learn more about intentional adulteration here.

ISO 22000:  ISO is the International Organization for Standardization.  They have thousands of standards across many different businesses, products and systems.  ISO 22000 is the ISO standard for food safety management systems.  Like other major food safety management systems it is based on the principles of HACCP.

NSF:  a pseudo-government organization head-quartered in the United States that is active in the area of food safety and sanitation.

PCQI:  Preventive Controls Qualified Individual.  The name of the role held by an expert food safety professional who meets certain requirements under the (US) Food Safety Modernisation Act.

SQF:  Safe Quality Food Institute.  The Safe Quality Food Institute owns and publishes a group of food safety standards also known as SQF that is a GFSI – approved standard.

USP: United States Pharmacopeial Convention.  USP is a non-profit organization that creates identity and purity standards for food ingredients and food chemicals, as well as for medical drugs.

TACCP: Threat Assessment Critical Control Point.  TACCP = prevention of malicious threats to food.

VACCP: Vulnerability Assessment Critical Control Point.  VACCP = food fraud prevention.  Learn more about TACCP and VACCP here.

Learn about Vulnerability Assessments, what they are and how to do them, here.

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Vulnerability assessment methods

There are two general approaches to performing a vulnerability assessment for food fraud.

But first…. for the purposes of this page, a vulnerability assessment is a risk-assessment-style evaluation of a food product or ingredient’s vulnerability to food fraud.  For information about food defense vulnerability assessments (intentional adulteration vulnerabilities), click here.

The two approaches are (1) a conventional risk assessment model or (2) based on the recommendations of the British Retail Consortium (BRC) in their guidance document Understanding Vulnerability Assessment (2015)

Food fraud vulnerability assessment Food fraud vulnerability assessment BRC

The conventional method is a combination of the likelihood of something occurring versus consequences if that thing occurs.  This method is recommended for all types of food businesses.  It allows businesses to identify their most vulnerable ingredients, products and brands and provides an excellent framework to prioritise mitigation strategies.

The second method is recommended for businesses wishing to meet the requirements of British Retail Consortium (BRC) Food Safety Standard Issue 7 and Issue 8 (clause 5.4.2).  The BRC method does not address the risks from all types of food fraud; it only addresses the risk from adulteration and substitution of raw materials and ingredients.  Therefore it is not recommended for businesses that need to meet the requirements of other GFSI food safety standards such as FSSC 22000 Version 4 (clause 2.1.4.6) or SQF Edition 8.  What are these acronymns?

For more information about how to conduct a vulnerability assessment, take a look at Vulnerability Assessments; What? Why? How?