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Army MOS · Medical

640A Food Safety Officer

Current service use not established

This code is listed in the directory. Inclusion alone does not confirm current service use.

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Overview

A Food Safety Officer manages food inspection personnel, facilities, and equipment used to maintain military food hygiene, safety, and quality assurance under veterinary guidance. The officer conducts sanitary inspections, identifies deficiencies, coordinates food inspection operations, and directs subsistence sampling for nuclear, biological, and chemical contamination testing.

Minimum clearance: Secret

Core Skills

  • Sanitary inspections and facility compliance ratings
  • Food sampling for hazardous contamination testing
  • Interpretation of food deterioration test findings
  • Foodborne illness investigation data collection

Civilian Career Paths

Career associations are editorial assessments of the cited evidence, not an official crosswalk unless the evidence explicitly says so. O*NET supplies civilian occupation information, not proof of a military match. Related experience does not confer civilian qualifications. Tasks and tools below describe civilian work, not military training.

Agricultural Inspectors

Conducting sanitary inspections, identifying deficiencies, and rating food-handling facilities transfers directly to the food-inspection work within this occupation.

How to prepare: Review the food-safety standards used by a target inspection agency and practice writing a findings report that connects observed deficiencies to those standards.

What the civilian work involves
  • Inspect food products and processing procedures to determine whether products are safe to eat.
  • Interpret and enforce government acts and regulations and explain required standards to agricultural workers.
Civilian tools and software (examples)
  • Microsoft Excel
  • Microsoft Word

Food Science Technicians

Directing food sampling and interpreting microbiological, chemical, and physical findings supports food-quality testing and comparison of results against standards.

How to prepare: Practice building a food-testing worksheet that records sample results, compares them with reference standards, and documents quality findings.

What the civilian work involves
  • Maintain records of testing results or other documents as required by state or other governing agencies.
  • Analyze test results to classify products or compare results with standard tables.
Civilian tools and software (examples)
  • Microsoft Excel
  • Microsoft Word

Notes & Sources

Evidence for this guidance (3 documents)
  1. Army COOL MOC feed: 640A Food Safety Officer

    [1] data/authority/army-codes.json entry 640A (OSD COOL feed, fetched 2026-07-25); DB rank warrant_officer, authority codeType warrant_officer

    Supports: Sanitary inspections and facility compliance ratings, Food sampling for hazardous contamination testing, Interpretation of food deterioration test findings, Foodborne illness investigation data collection, Agricultural Inspectors (O*NET 45-2011.00), Food Science Technicians (O*NET 19-4013.00)

  2. O*NET: Agricultural Inspectors

    [2] O*NET 30.3 occupational data

    Supports: Agricultural Inspectors (O*NET 45-2011.00)

  3. O*NET: Food Science Technicians

    [3] O*NET 30.3 occupational data

    Supports: Food Science Technicians (O*NET 19-4013.00)

Defense contractor jobs for 640A

Descriptions may be summarized for clarity. Verify all information with your branch career counselor or official military documentation before making career decisions.

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