Firms on back foot over flu
Food companies are unprepared for the greatest threat facing their businesses today a flu pandemic according to risk management consultant Aon.
Aon warned that many of the sector's labour intensive companies could suffer huge shortages and disruption to production if an avian flue pandemic hit the UK. Furthermore, the increasing use of overseas suppliers and just-in-time techniques meant a risk of supply interruptions of poultry meat and profit losses, said an Aon study.
But despite the risks, research by the Chartered Management Institute showed that businesses had given little consideration to the possible impacts of a pandemic. Business continuity plans focused instead on fire, loss of IT capacity, telecommunications and site access, it said.
Peter Jackson, consumer products group md with Aon's risk services division, said: "The food industry must acknowledge that the outbreak of a flu pandemic is a genuine risk and one of the greatest threats to their future performance. However, little is being done to address the risks.
Aon said that scientists agreed it was a question of 'when' not 'if' the UK suffered a bird flu pandemic, which the World Health Organisation estimated could debilitate up to 25% of the workforce.
Aon said that contingency plans should be robust, flexible and integrated into existing continuity processes, not "bolted on as an afterthought. Splitting the workforce to protect key people, ensuring staff can work from home and, crucially, rehearsing contingency plans, were other suggestions.
One senior figure at major chicken processor Grampian Foods refuted claims that businesses such as Grampian were unprepared: "We have got a number of plans in place although I am not willing to share them publicly as have other poultry companies.
Meanwhile, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has urged poultry keepers to plan for bird flu and the risk consultancy National Britannia warned that catering and hospitality workers needed to take extra precautions.
As Food Manufacture went to press, Common Ground, an exercise to test the response to bird flu by 27 European nations, inter-governmental agencies and companies, was getting under way.
