The FDA’s Employees F.I.R.S.T. program educates workers about the risk of intentional food contamination and the actions they can take to identify and reduce these risks.

This program includes 5 basic principles:

1. Follow company food defense plan and procedures.
2. Inspect your work area and surrounding areas.
3. Recognize anything out of the ordinary.
4. Secure all ingredients, supplies, and finished product.
5. Tell management if you notice anything unusual or suspicious.

Now, let’s take a look at how North American dsm-firmenich premix plants apply each of these principles:

Follow company food defense plan and procedures:

• Each dsm-firmenich plant completes an assessment and creates their own site-specific Food Defense plan to minimize the threat to our food supply and strengthen our infrastructure from deliberate threats of contaminants.
• Food Defense principles are incorporated into each of our standard operating procedures.

Inspect your work area and surrounding areas:

• Facility Inspections are completed to ensure Food Defense principles are continually maintained.
• Cameras are in place to capture acts and behaviors of a suspicious nature.

Recognize anything out of the ordinary:

• dsm-firmenich maintains clean and organized facilities help identify any usual items.
• Every dsm-firmenich employee has the right to stop the process if they recognize anything out of the ordinary to ensure the premix we manufacture is safe.
• NIR, Trace Mineral, Vitamin and Quality monitoring programs are implemented to prevent use of adulterated ingredients and to ensure ingredients meet required specifications.

Secure all ingredients, supplies, and finished product:

• dsm-firmenich utilizes strict security measures through video surveillance, contractor/visitor management and by requiring key card access at all entry points.
• Inspections are completed on all incoming, and outgoing material, to mitigate the risk of foreign contaminants.
• dsm-firmenich- specific tamper-evident seals are employed on finished products to ensure product security.

Tell management if you notice anything unusual or suspicious:

• Management notification for anything out of the ordinary is built into every process and each dsm-firmenich work instruction.
• At dsm-firmenich employees can be the first line of defense by reporting suspicious activities either to their direct manager, plant manager or through the dsm-firmenich Whistleblower process.

At dsm-firmenich, Quality is every customer’s right, and every employee’s responsibility; and an effective Food Defense system is one of the many ways we guarantee our customer’s receive the highest quality product.

If you would like to learn more about dsm-firmenich’s Quality programs, please contact your account manager for more information.