What is PAS 96:2026 Food defence – Protection and prevention from deliberate acts - Guide about?
PAS 96:2026 provides guidance to food business operators on how to assess, manage, and reduce the risk of threats to their businesses. It supports organizations in protecting food safety, authenticity, and supply continuity from malicious and deliberate attacks that could lead to contamination, disruption, or financial harm.
The PAS recognizes that threats to the food sector are continually evolving, and while it’s not practical to identify every potential attack, it helps organizations apply a Threat Assessment Critical Control Points (TACCP) to risk management approach that focuses attention and resources where they are most needed.
PAS 96 builds on existing food safety controls to strengthen food industry defences. It enables organizations to identify vulnerabilities, implement proportionate mitigation measures, and deter and detect deliberate acts of harm within a structured framework.
Who is the guide for?
PAS 96:2026 is intended for use by organizations across the food and drink supply chain that need to prevent and mitigate deliberate and intentional threats. The PAS is suitable for:
- primary producers in the food and drink supply chain;
- food and drink product manufacturers;
- distributors and logistics providers;
- retailers;
- food service providers; and
- small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
What does it cover?
PAS 96:2026 outlines the fundamentals of a TACCP approach and provides a risk management methodology that is aligned with the Codex Alimentarius General Principles of Food Hygiene (CXC 1-1969).
It assumes business operators have established preventative food safety systems (such as HACCP), supported by robust crisis management and business continuity procedures, and adds a more distinct layer of focus on food defence.
PAS 96 was first published in 2008 and has had regular updates since then. It has always remained a guidance document and not a set of requirements because a key feature of the PAS is proportionality. Risks can vary for different organizations, different operations, and different products. It is therefore implicit that different threat assessments result in different controls that are proportionate to a business and its unique context.
Why should you use the standard?
Food protection is a critical national priority. As the UK’s largest manufacturing sector, the food industry plays a vital role in economic stability, public wellbeing, and national resilience. Ensuring the safety, integrity, and continuity of food production and supply is therefore of strategic national importance.
The sector faces an increasingly complex threat environment. Geopolitical instability, including conflict and trade disruption, has exposed the vulnerability of global food supply networks. The frequency and sophistication of cyber-attacks targeting food businesses has also increased, posing significant risks to operational continuity.
Maintaining increasingly fragile and interconnected global supply network is becoming increasingly difficult. Rising input costs, resource constraints, and escalating threats to primary production place additional pressure on food businesses of all sizes. Against this backdrop, the ability to identify, assess, and mitigate threats is essential.
PAS 96 is central to this resilience agenda. It provides food businesses with a structured and proportionate framework to identify, assess, and mitigate threats to operations, supply chains, and people.
What has changed?
PAS 96:2026 is a full revision of PAS 96:2017, and introduces several principal changes:
- recognizes current UK Government guidance on the increasing risk of cyberattack;
- addresses the evolving threat landscape post Covid-19, which exposed global supply chain fragility and vulnerabilities in international food trade;
- recognizes the potential impact of climate change on threats to food and supply chains due to disruptions in primary production leading to ingredient scarcity; and
- anticipates the effect of food sector developments driven by policies such as “go-green”, “carbon neutral”, “net-zero”, and food waste reduction.
The revision also provides opportunity to align definitions and integrate the collective learnings from the global food community. Key updates include:
- recent food defence cases;
- updated cybercrime threat information;
- alignment of the TACCP process diagram to the application guidance;
- an expansion of food protection arrangements; and
- further information on other approaches to food and drink protection.
The document format has been restructured, with question prompts and checklists being relocated to Annex D to provide a dedicated set of tools to guide the TACCP approach.