Health & Safety Backgrounder
Food Security

The safety of U.S. consumers and the U.S. food supply is a top priority for the National Restaurant Association.

What the NRA is doing about food security
Ensuring the safety of restaurant customers and the U.S. food supply has never been a higher priority for the National Restaurant Association and the restaurant industry. Our goal is to improve upon what is already the most secure food supply in the world. The NRA is:

• Meeting with government officials. The NRA maintains active lines of communication with all federal and state regulatory agencies involved in food safety and food security, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the FDA, and the White House.

• Produced Food Security: An Introduction, a booket and poster to help owners and managers identify, address and prevent potential food-security threats in the restaurant-and-foodservice industry.

• Gave input to the FDA to help develop the agency's 2002 guidance, Food Producers, Processors, Transporters, and Retailers: Food Security Preventive Measures Guidance. The guidance charts the flow of food in the U.S. from farm to table and outlines steps each segment of the food chain can take to minimize the risk to food under their control that is vulnerable to tampering or criminal or terrorist actions.

• Founding member of the Food and Agriculture Industry Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC), in cooperation with the Food Marketing Institute and 40+ other food and agriculture organizations. The Food and Agricultural ISAC works with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other public officials on a range of food security issues. Find out more about the Food Industry ISAC by calling us at (202) 331-5900.

• Helped organize a mock exercise in March 2004 in conjunction with the Restaurant Association of Maryland and federal and state emergency management officials to test how the restaurant-and-foodservice industry would respond to a potential food security problem.

More food security resources
• FDA on Food Safety and Terrorism
• FoodSafety.gov on Countering Bioterrorism and Other Threats to the Food Supply