Most food professionals would know exactly what food safety is about but when asked about food defence the situation can be slightly different.
Food defence, as defined by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) in their bench 2020 is:
"The process to ensure the security of food, food ingredients, feed or food packaging from all forms of intentional malicious attack including ideologically motivated attack leading to contamination or unsafe product"
However, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) define it differently:
"The effort to prevent intentional food contamination by biological, physical, chemical or radiological hazards that are not reasonably likely to occur in the food supply"
So in simple terms, it is an intentional attack aimed at causing harm.
It is worth highlighting that GFSI definition include all forms of potential attacks while FDA's definition focuses on actual adulteration or contamination of the food.
You and your food defence team need to be clear on the food defence scope expected by the standards or regulation you work with. As an example, McDonald's Supplier Quality management System, which has one of the broadest food defence expectations, expects control measures to prevent intentional harm to people, products, and process, as well assassinated losses.