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What are TACCP and VACCP?
15th September 2022 by Megan Huziej
Last updated on 3rd May 2023

In this article
What is TACCP?
What is VACCP?
What is the difference between TACCP and VACCP?
How do TACCP and VACCP work?
Where would TACCP and VACCP be used?
Why are TACCP and VACCP important?
What are the benefits of TACCP and VACCP?

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Final thoughts

Consumers should have confidence that their food is safe. The key
responsibilities for all food businesses under the Food Safety Act 1990 are
to ensure that:

 Businesses do not include anything in food, remove anything from food

or treat food in any way which means it would be damaging to the health of
people eating it.
 The food businesses serve or sell is of the nature, substance or quality
which consumers would expect.
 The food is labelled, advertised and presented in a way that is not
false or misleading.

As a rule, we can be confident that our food is safe, as risk management

through HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points) has long been
established to manage food safety, controlling any potential hazards that
may be found in food due to processing faults or human error. However,
potential threats and vulnerabilities to the food industry, where food is
deliberately tampered with and potentially contaminated for malicious
reasons or for financial gain, have been increasing over the past few years
and these are not specifically identified and mitigated through HACCP.

Notable examples of where food adulteration has taken place in the UK

food industry include:

 The horsemeat scandal which hit the headlines in 2013. Burgers being
sold in Tesco, Asda, Lidl, Aldi and Iceland were found to contain quite high
levels of horsemeat and, in some cases, pork and other meats too. The
suppliers were committing food fraud by substituting beef with cheaper
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meat for economic gain. Tesco’s market value slumped by €360m and sales
of frozen burgers dropped by 43% as a result.
 In 2020, a farmer was found guilty at the Old Baily of contaminating
baby food jars with shards of metal as part of a £1.5m blackmail plot. He
began threatening Tesco in spring 2018, writing to his local store in
Lincolnshire and warning them that unless they paid him £750,000 worth
of bitcoin, an online currency that would allow him to remain anonymous,
he would contaminate the food on their shelves. He demanded larger sums
of money, telling Tesco that he would also contaminate jars with
salmonella, white powder and knives. His activities had escalated, as a
mum in Lockerbie discovered small knife fragments in the baby food that
she was about to give her child. A nationwide product recall was issued and
the public was kept safe due to the swift action taken by the supermarket,
police and other agencies.
 In August 2021, three supermarkets in Fulham were closed after a
man was found injecting items with an unknown chemical using a syringe.
These stores were closed temporarily, and shoppers were instructed to
throw away everything they had purchased.

As the total consumer expenditure on food, drink and catering in 2021 was
£240bn and the value of food and drink exports in 2021 was £20.2bn, the
food sector is a multibillion-pound industry, employing in the first quarter of
2022, 4.1m people, 13.4% of GB employment. It is therefore imperative
that the sector has in place procedures which will identify potential threats
and vulnerabilities and specify methods to counteract them, in order to
protect consumers and the industry as a whole. Economically motivated
adulteration and food fraud is the biggest threat to food safety and it costs
the food industry £11bn a year in the UK alone.

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TACCP and VACCP work together with HACCP to ensure safety throughout
the food chain; both are designed to prevent the adulteration of food.

What is TACCP?

TACCP is the acronym for Threat Assessment and Critical Control Points.
This is all about food defence and the focus is on food tampering,
intentional adulteration or contamination of food. TACCP builds upon the
existing processes of HACCP in ensuring the safety of food products.
HACCP is about managing food safety hazards in the food chain; TACCP
aims to protect food products from deliberate contamination with the
intention to cause harm (behaviourally or ideologically motivated).

TACCP implementation involves thinking like a potential attacker and

examines vulnerability, likelihood, opportunities and an appreciation that
intentional contamination requires human intervention. TACCP helps to
proactively identify and manage control points in the supply chain that can
be at risk of intentional contamination.

What is VACCP?

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VACCP is the acronym for Vulnerability Assessment and Critical Control

Points. The focus is more on adulteration for financial gain in the supply
chain.

For example:

 Product substitution.
 Bulking out with a cheaper ingredient.
 The sale of counterfeit or stolen goods.

VACCP is a special type of risk assessment that helps identify and control
vulnerabilities in the food supply chain that can be exposed to economically
motivated food fraud. Unlike HACCP, which identifies all the potential
hazards that can enter food unintentionally, VACCP is concerned with
preventing food fraud, which is the intentional contamination of food during
its production. This is usually done for economically motivated reasons.

In a vulnerability assessment, a food business will look for vulnerabilities in

its production processes and supply chain to work out the points at which
food fraud can happen. This is useful because it makes it easier to complete
a threat assessment and identify the specific kind of food fraud that can
occur.

Food fraud occurs when food or drink is sold in a way that deliberately
misleads or deceives consumers or customers for financial gain. Food crime
interventions demonstrate the UK food safety authorities’ ability to receive,
assess and respond to intelligence concerning food crime. The National
Food Crime Unit focuses its work on seven types of food crime, including
food fraud.

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VACCP is concerned with preventing two of these:

 Adulteration – including a foreign substance which is not on the

product’s label to lower costs or fake a higher quality.
 Substitution – replacing a food or ingredient with another substance
that is similar but inferior.

What is the difference between TACCP and VACCP?

TACCP and VACCP look at specific potential adulteration opportunities

within the supply chain. The difference between the two is:

 TACCP is concerned with the prevention of malicious threats to food,

such as sabotage, extortion or terrorism.
 VACCP is concerned with the prevention of economically motivated
food fraud.

How do TACCP and VACCP work?

Both TACCP and VACCP use the same risk management approach but there
are subtle differences between the two. Threat Assessment and Critical
Control Point (TACCP) helps food producers identify weak points in their
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supply chain and processing activities that may be open to intentional and
malicious attacks. The TACCP protocol focuses on tampering, intentional
adulteration of food and food defence. In most cases TACCP should be a
team activity, as that is the best way to bring skills, especially people
management skills, together. For many small businesses, the team
approach is not practicable and it may be the job of one person.

The TACCP team can and should modify the TACCP process to best meet
its needs and adapt it to other threats as necessary to deal with four
underlining questions:

 Who might want to attack us?

 How might they do it?
 Where are we vulnerable?
 How can we stop them?

The aim is to minimise the chances of loss of life, ill health, financial loss
and damage to business reputation that an attack could cause.

TACCP cannot stop individuals or organisations from claiming that they

have contaminated food, but it can help judge whether that claim is likely to
be true. Any such claim, if judged to be credible, and any actual incident
should be treated as a crisis. The organisation needs to take steps to keep
operations running and to inform those involved.

TACCP risk assessments might follow this process:

 Identify specific threats to the business.

 Assess the likelihood of an attack by considering the motivation of the
prospective attacker, the vulnerability of the process, the opportunity and
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the capability they have of carrying out the attack and the certainty of
information on which the assessment is based.
 Assess the potential impact by considering the consequences of a
successful attack.
 Judge the priority to be given to different threats by comparing their
likelihood and their potential impact.
 Prioritise threats based on risk, and communicating such a prioritisation
across trading partners for shared risk acceptance.
 Decide upon proportionate controls needed to discourage the attacker
and give early notification of an attack.
 Maintain information and intelligence systems to enable revision of
priorities.

VACCP on the other hand aims to help protect businesses from the risk of
food fraud that can cause serious food safety incidents, costly product
recalls, business closure, and legal action. Fraud in the food industry is more
prevalent than you might want to believe.

As it is, there are three main types of food fraud:

 Mislabelling – the most common mislabelled foods are olive oil, honey,
coffee, alcohol, fish, orange juice, milk and saffron. Mislabelling can include
stating a food is organic when it is not.
 Counterfeiting – ingredients and products with similar packaging, or
the mixing of inferior ingredients to increase the volume of products; for
example, counterfeit spices such as saffron, oregano or pepper are mixed
with different materials.
 Dilution – the addition of ingredients such as sugars or sweeteners to
honey or maple syrup to create a similar taste; adding volume to foods such

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as tea, coffee, flour etc.; and substituting ingredients for cheaper

alternatives such as in the horsemeat scandal.

Conducting a VACCP risk assessment involves two main factors that will
need to be addressed:

 Identifying the risk areas for each ingredient.

 Devising a plan to mitigate the risks.

There are seven main sources of food fraud that need to be considered for
both ingredients and finished products within the VACCP. These include:

 Unapproved enhancements such as the use of unauthorised additives.

 Counterfeiting.
 Dilution – the reduction of premium grade products by dilution with
lower quality materials.
 Substitution – declaring an ingredient(s) is made from a different
source than specified.
 Concealment.
 Mislabelling – incorrect expiry dates, country of origin or ingredient
type or variety.
 Grey market production / theft / diversion.

There are typically four categories of potential attackers which need to

be considered during TACCP and VACCP risk assessments:

 Outsiders – those individuals with no current contact with the

business.

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 Supply chain personnel – no direct contact with the business but have
access to the wider supply chain with which the business interacts.
 Suppliers / Contractors – trusted status so will have direct contact and
open access to areas of the business.
 Insiders – ongoing direct contact with the business as permanent /
temporary / agency members of staff.

Controls to reduce and remove threats should be implemented in areas

such as:

 Business systems.
 Distribution networks.
 Finished products.
 Packaging.
 Premises.
 Processes.
 Raw materials.

You should conduct a full review if a new risk emerges; for example,
whenever there are shortages in the market, food fraud incidents, or price
increases. If none of these happen, you should review the plan annually, as
a minimum. The key to the successful identification of new risks in this area
is communication with procurement, who may hear about issues in advance
of more public notifications.

The mitigation strategies that have been developed need to be collated and
documented in a central TACCP / VACCP register. Document procedures
and keep records for each assessment and references. The implementation
process also provides an opportunity to test and challenge the TACCP and

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VACCP mitigation strategies to ensure that they work as intended in the

real world.

Where would TACCP and VACCP be used?

TACCP and VACCP are employed by all types of food businesses as part of
a systematic approach to risk management to address the issues of
malicious attacks and food adulteration/fraud which will compromise food
safety and product integrity. TACCP and VACCP should be used as part of a
broader risk management process which includes HACCP.

TACCP and VACCP apply to all ingredients and all possible occurrences of
food fraud or intentional food adulteration. Having identified the threats and
quantified the significance of the threats to the business there needs to be
an evaluation of who is likely to attack the business and where the attack
could be introduced by understanding the impact of personnel, premises,
processes, services, logistics and cybercrime. Controls should be
implemented on raw materials, packaging, finished products, processes,
premises, distribution networks and business systems to reduce and remove
threats.

Why are TACCP and VACCP important?

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Creating a food defence system based on TACCP and VACCP is not a strict
legal requirement. However, the Food Safety Act 1990 requires all food
businesses to produce food that will not cause harm, complies with food
safety requirements, and is as the consumer expects. Taking steps to
prevent food contamination is a key part of ensuring that this legislation is
met.

TACCP and VACCP help food producers identify weak points in their supply
chain and processing and/or retailing activities that may be open to
intentional and malicious attacks or fraud.

Food and feed safety, including incidents, food poisoning, outbreaks,

allergens and intolerances, recalls and risks associated with food crime are
regulated by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in England, Wales and
Northern Ireland, and by Food Standards Scotland (FSS) in Scotland. These
independent government departments work with local authorities to
enforce food safety regulations and check that standards are being met.

The number of food safety incidents reported has increased; much of this is
due to better ways of detection and increased voluntary reporting by food
businesses and does not necessarily indicate a change in the food and feed
safety profile of the UK. The types of incidents that are reported, however,
provide an insight into the causes of incidents and the associated risks. This
is an important reason why TACCP and VACCP risk assessments, mitigation
planning and incident reporting need to be implemented.

What are the benefits of TACCP and VACCP?

Some of the benefits of a food business implementing TACCP and

VACCP include that it:

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 Demonstrates your commitment to food safety.

 Reduces the likelihood of a deliberate attack or fraud.
 Demonstrates that reasonable precautions are in place to protect the
supply chain.
 Reassures stakeholders and customers that the organisation is
appropriately managing the risks in the supply chain and demonstrates due
diligence about the safety of your production and supply chain.
 Reduces the impact of an attack on your food business.
 Protects and enhances your brand and organisation’s reputation.

Final thoughts

TACCP and VACCP are the best available defences against food fraud and
contamination incidents. If employed correctly, both TACCP and VACCP
help a business to minimise the chances of such an attack or to reduce the
damage if an attack should occur. Together with HACCP they help you
ensure the safety of your products from both intentional and unintentional
contamination.

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About the author

Megan Huziej
Megan has worked with CPD Online College since August 2020, she is in
charge of content production, as well as planning, managing and
delegating tasks. Megan works closely with our writers, voice artists,
companies and individuals to create the most appropriate and relevant
content as well as also using and managing SEO. She gained her Business
Administration Level 3 qualification over the duration of being at CPD
Online College as well. Outside of work Megan loves to venture to
different places and eateries as well as spending quality time with friends
and family.

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