By: Doug Baker, Vice President Industry Relations-Private Brands, Technology, Food Marketing Institute

If ever there was a time to turn up the dial on asset protection, it is now. While there are any number of issues that keep those charged with asset protection up at night, perhaps no topic is more vital to your company’s customers and investors than that of food defense.

As part of the Audit/Safety/Asset Protection (ASAP) Conference, Rod Wheeler, founder and CEO of the Global Food Defense Institute, will lead a session titled “Risk, Readiness & Reliability: Conducting Your Supply Chain Vulnerability and Risk Assessments.”

“Food retailers, like other industries, need to remain vigilant,” said Wheeler. “Companies have to arm themselves to protect their people, their products, their customers and the national economy.”

In his fast-paced session at the ASAP Conference, scheduled March 20-22 at Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando, Wheeler will take attendees through everything we now know about how to protect the supply chain that eventually delivers products to your customers.

“Specifically, the food that will end up on your customers’ dinner table,” he said.

Wheeler will clearly point out the three most important steps you company must take to assure the supply chain that delivers products to your customers is safe.

• First, he will explain what a site vulnerability assessment is and how you can conduct your own.
• Next, Wheeler will help you understand how to write a facility food defense plan.
• Finally, he will explain what you must do to assure that your managers and supervisors are fully trained in food defense.

Certainly, there are great risks in assuring the security of your supply chain, but there are also great opportunities as consumers increasingly look with a discriminating eye toward those retailers whose products they can trust.

“The goal here is to enlighten attendees on what’s out there and what means we have to protect the supply chain,” Wheeler said. Attend this ASAP Conference session and guarantee your T’s are crossed and your I’s are dotted when it comes to food defense. Learn more at www.FMIASAP.com.