PAS 96:2017

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What is this PAS about?

Food safety management systems work very effectively to reduce the inadvertent threats to food and drink safety. Typically, however, they don’t cover how to detect or mitigate deliberate attacks. These might be incidents of malicious contamination, or economically motivated adulteration, or the growing misuse of digital techniques. PAS 96 was produced to combat these issues.

Sponsored by DEFRA and the Food Standards Agency, it guides food business managers through approaches and procedures they can adopt that will improve the resilience of food supply chains to fraud or other forms of attack.

The scope covers all threats and the protection of all elements of food supply. It focuses on the safety and integrity of food and drink, but the viability of businesses within the supply chain is also covered.

Who is this PAS for?

• This PAS will be valuable to food businesses of all sizes and at all points in the food supply chain.
• It will be of particular use to managers of small and medium sized food enterprises without easy access to specialist advice.

Why should you use this PAS?

It provides practical guidance on how to avoid and mitigate threats to food and food supply using a risk management methodology called TACCP – Threat Assessment Critical Control Points. TACCP assesses vulnerability to fraud, cyber-crime, ideologically motivated individuals and other ‘insider’ threats.

In addition, the 2017 edition tackles raising awareness of the increased risk that can come from cyber threats. It also demonstrates some specific outcomes in relation to cybercrime.

The PAS is intended to be a practical and easily used guide and so is written in everyday language. It’s to be used in a common sense rather than a legalistic way.

What’s changed since the last update?

This is a full revision of PAS 96:2014, introducing the following principal changes:

• Normative and informative references have been updated
• Subclause 3.7 Cyber-crime has been revised
• Subclause 6.2.4 has been added to cover vulnerabilities related to cyber-attacks
• Two new fictional case studies have been added as subclauses A.5 and A.6 to illustrate cyber security issues
• Annex B updated
• Annex D added covering 10 steps to cyber security
• There are some editorial amendments