Food Defense and Emergency Response

Significant Incident Preparedness and Response Staff

Food defense and emergency response planning are critical components to FSIS’ mission to protect public health. The Significant Incident Preparedness and Response Staff (SIPRS) is responsible for managing these programs. SIPRS develops, maintains, and coordinates all FSIS activities to prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover from significant incidents resulting from intentional and unintentional contamination and other significant non-routine incidents affecting meat, poultry, and processed egg products. The staff works with partner government agencies at all levels, private industry, and other organizations to establish and maintain the Agency's food defense infrastructure for prevention, preparedness and emergency response from chemical, biological and radiological incidents. SIPRS provides technical advice and consultation, to Senior Leadership and stakeholders, on all threats affecting the food supply.

Program Priorities

Preparedness

Being prepared for an incident, whether is be a hurricane or an intentional adulteration, can help a company protect its business, product, and employees and will create a more resilient food supply.

Collaboration

FSIS works collaboratively with a diverse body of stakeholders. Industry, academia and/or other government agencies join together to identify and share information about potential vulnerabilities in the food supply and distribution system. This better equips FSIS and its partners to take steps individually and collectively to protect public health.

Outreach and Education

FSIS has developed multiple tools and resources to help educate our regulated industry and in-commerce firms on how to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from any significant incident.

Emergency Response

Emergency Response planning helps manage incidents reports (IRs) during a natural or manmade disaster. A natural disaster includes wildfires, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes or earthquakes. Manmade disasters present a grave, or potentially grave threat to public health and to the safety of FSIS-regulated products, or FSIS personnel (i.e. robbery, bomb threat, chemical spill, fire, unintentional product contamination, human pandemic, illness, injury or intentional product tampering). The SIPRS staff communicates the threat that has the potential to affect the food or agriculture sector and assists the FSIS personnel with preparing an IR so the information can be shared appropriately across the agency.

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FSIS Continuity of Operations (COOP)

Continuity of Operations (COOP) is the effort to ensure that essential functions continue to be performed during the disruption of typical operations. The FSIS Office of Management, Significant Incident Preparedness and Response Staff (SIPRS) is entrusted with COOP activities as required by Presidential Policy Directive 40 (PPD-40). PPD-40 specifies certain requirements for continuity plan development, including the requirement that all federal executive branch departments and agencies develop an integrated, overlapping continuity capability, that supports the eight National Essential Functions (NEFs) described in the document.

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Food Defense

Food Defense is the protection of food products from contamination or adulteration intended to cause public health harm or economic disruption. In collaboration with partners and stakeholders across government, industry, and academia, FSIS continues to implement an aggressive program to build a resilient U.S. food infrastructure with the ability to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from intentional adulteration of our food supply. The mission of the FSIS Food Defense Program is to protect the U.S. food supply from dynamic and evolving threats.

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