State officials' perceptions of the food and agriculture sector criticality assessment tool (FASCAT), food-system risk, and food defense funding

Determining food system criticality is necessary to mitigate risks to the nation's food supply and prioritize and allocate funding. The Food and Agriculture Sector Criticality Assessment Tool (FASCAT) is a tool used broadly by state governments to determine the criticality of food systems throughout the US State officials (SOs) responsible for food defense (n = 32) were surveyed to determine whether FASCAT is of value to food defense and to determine SOs' security beliefs, values, and practices related to food defense. Results indicated that: (1) SOs believe FASCAT is easier to use than other forms of risk assessment; (2) FASCAT training may have introduced bias into assessment of probability, threat, vulnerability, and consequences; (3) FASCAT is valuable to SOs; (4) SOs do not routinely follow security management best practices; (5) SOs believe that intentional biological threats to the food system are the most probable threats, though without supporting evidence; and (6) SOs believe food defense risk mitigation is not adequately funded by state or federal governments. These findings indicate that even though bias was potentially introduced to FASCAT assessments, SOs believe FASCAT has been useful to them in determining food system criticality. SOs indicate that more funding is needed from state and federal governments to adequately mitigate and manage food defense risks, and that they require more comprehensive training from food defense subject matter experts in threat assessment, risk mitigation, and security management to reduce the possibility of bias from FASCAT training.