Bird flu could put food firms on the back foot

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 avian flu hit the UK. Furthermore, the increasing use of overseas suppliers and just-in-time techniques meant a risk of interruptions to the supply of poultry meat and thus lost profit.

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 its 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 (WHO) estimated could debilitate up to 25% of the workforce.

Contingency plans should be robust, flexible and integrated into existing continuity processes, not “bolted on as an afterthought”, advised Aon. Splitting the workforce to protect key people, ensuring staff could work from home and, crucially, rehearsing contingency plans, were other suggestions.

But a senior figure at chicken processor Grampian Foods refuted claims that businesses such as theirs were unprepared: “We have a number of plans in place - although I am not willing to share them publicly - as have other poultry companies.”

The WHO considers direct contact with infected poultry the main route of human infection, but says exposure to the virus is most likely during slaughter, de-feathering, butchering and cooking preparation.

Meanwhile, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs urged poultry keepers to plan for bird flu and as Food Manufacture​ went to press an exercise to test the response to bird flu by 27 European countries was getting under way.