Terrorism is a growing concern. But, how does terrorism relate to food, and why should food manufacturers be concerned?
Food is an attractive target because everyone eats. And, in the future, terrorists can use the food supply to create fear, inflict public harm and damage food company brands. This extends to the refrigerated and frozen food industry, where for example, a frozen food manufacturer in Japan recalled over 6 million products in 2013 after an employee adulterated the products with malathion, a pesticide. This incident resulted in almost 3,000 cases of consumer illness, forced the company to shut down and caused the parent company’s stock to plummet.