The Food Industry Center has pursued its food defense research with funding and and research support from the National Center for Food Protection and Defense (NCFPD), a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence located at the University of Minnesota.

The Center's research has concentrated around consumer attitudes towards an attack on the firms in the food supply and industry preparedness for an intentional attack on the firms in the food supply chain or the food itself. Currently, the Center is conducting three studies on these topics:

Continuous Tracking and Analyzing Consumer Confidence in the U.S. Food Supply Chain

The tracking project involves a continuous survey of consumer attitudes, beliefs, preferences and buying intentions tracked along with media announcements about food safety and terrorist events. The collected data will provide a basis for understanding linkages between food safety/defense incidents due to food terrorism, or other threats to national security, and their effect on consumer confidence, food demand (sales) and the economy. The information will be used to predict how quickly consumer confidence is restored following such events, and aid in assessing the vulnerability and resiliency of the food system. The results will also be useful for predicting economic losses due changes in consumer confidence, and provide insight on how private media and public communication may exacerbate and/or mitigate the effects of terrorism or foodborne illness events.


Diagnostic Tools and Gap Analysis for Food Firms' Defense Practices

The diagnostic tool allows food companies to benchmark themselves against the best-in-class (industry leader) when it comes to adopting business and production practices that protect the food being received, processed, and delivered from potential terrorist attacks. The tool will also help food firms in each sector of the supply chain establish their strategies and priorities for food defense. The Diagnostic Tool and Gap Analysis was created out of The Food Industry Center's Supply Chain Benchmarking Project, conducted over the past three years, and has given us a diagnostic tool that we can deliver to food firms. It also helps explain and communicates to firms the most important defense and protection practices and the implications for recovery and resiliency.

A Probabilistic Analysis of Food Contamination and Associated Costs - An Index of Food Threats

This project develops a data-based probabilistic algorithm for food vulnerabilities and applies those probabilities to estimate the
expected costs (losses) both in the market (loss of sales) and in health care. The index will enable policy makers and food companies to
prioritize and rationalize the expenditure of scarce resources on the most critical food defense issues, enhancing the preparedness,
responsiveness, recoverability, and resiliency of the food system. The project will engage food industry leaders and local, state and federal
policy makers and will provide organizations with risk planning tools (matrices integrating probability and costs) to assist them in
managing food safety risk.

Cross Cultural Differences in Attitudes Toward Food Safety and Food Defense

A survey of cross-cultural attitudes toward food defense and food safety will be conducted to identify the common elements of public concern about food defense and food safety in countires that are major food importers other than the U.S. The research is intended to accelerate more comprehensive multi-lateral food defense agreements. Results from this project will provide the first information about the degree of cross-national similarities in public concern about food defense.

Completed Research

Consumer/Citizen Survey

The project compiled and analyzed data from 4,000 consumers to learn about their attitudes toward food protection and defense activities. These data were relevant to determining appropriate levels of public sector resources for efforts to secure the nation’s food supply beyond current efforts to support food safety. The survey collected information on consumers’ awareness, concern, attitudes toward, and expectations for a secure food supply. The project also assessed “willingness to pay”—the relative value consumers place on reducing risk and damages from potential food contamination incidents. Results and further analysis from the Survey can be found in the following TFIC Publications:

Working Paper #06-01 How Should America's Anti-Terrorism Budget Be Allocated? Findings from a National Survey of Attitudes of U.S.
Residents about Terrorism

Working Paper #06-03 A Segmentation of U.S. Consumers on Attitudes Relating to Terrorism and their Communication Preferences: Findings from a National Survey of Attitudes of U.S. Residents about Terrorism

Retail Benchmark Survey

TFIC was a collaborating partner with Michigan State University and the Georgia Institute of Technolocy on a project funded by NCFPD to benchmark food companies' (manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, retail food and foodservice companies) food defense practices. The study used an interview and survey methodolgy to capture the food defense practices of the participating companies and identified benchmarks and gaps in food defense practics. The project provided companies with a checklist and other tools to help make food and facilities an unattractive place for terrorists to attack. Results from The Food Industry Center's research can be found in Working Paper #07-02 Defending the Food Supply Chain: Retail Food, Foodservice and their Wholesale Suppliers.

A Global Chronology of Incidents of Chemical, Biological, Radioactive and Nuclear Attacks: 1961-2005

Visiting Co-Director and Adjunct Professor Hamid Mohtadi in collaboration with Antu Murshid completed their Chronology in July 2006. The compiled dataset of 488 observations is the first and most comprehensive global dataset yet on the chronology of CBRN (chemical, biological and radionuclear) events over the past half a century. The chronology provides a general description of each incident, along with details on the type of agent employed and the number of casualties that resulted. The following publications discuss the research of this project:

A Global Chronology of Incidents of Chemical, Biological, Radioactive and Nuclear Attacks: 1950-2005
A report to the National Center for Food Protection and Defense. 2006.

Analyzing catastrophic terrorist events with applications to the food industry. Mohtadi, Hamid; Murshid, Antu Panini. IN: The Economic Costs and Consequences of Terrorism, edited by Harry W. Richardson, Peter Gordon and James E. Moore II. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2007, pp. 182-207, 2007.