What is Food Defense?

• A. Protecting food from intentional adulteration.
• B. Food Safety.
• C. Food Availability.
• D. How the body metabolizes food.

Answer: (A)

Food Defense is the practice of safeguarding the food supply from deliberate acts of adulteration or tampering by malicious actors. It focuses on preventing and detecting intentional contamination across the production and distribution system, using security measures such as access control, tamper-evident packaging, employee screening, supply-chain verification, and ongoing surveillance.

This is distinct from Food Safety, which aims to prevent illness from unintentional hazards like pathogens, toxins, or foreign materials that occur during processing or handling, not deliberate wrongdoing. Food Availability concerns whether people have access to enough food, and how the system can meet demand, which is not about protecting against intentional harm. How the body metabolizes food relates to nutrition and physiology, not security measures.

So the best interpretation is that Food Defense centers on protecting the food supply from deliberate adulteration.