INDIAN WELLS, Calif. - The food industry needs a detailed plan for dealing with natural or human threats to the security of the nation's food supply, Natan Tabak, senior vice president, financial and administrative services, Wakefern Food Corp., Elizabeth, N.J., said here last week.
"We need a blueprint, but none is available," he said during a panel discussion on food security at the Executive Management Conference of the National Grocers Association, Alexandria, Va. "The time for action is now, because the industry is not ready for another disaster [like Hurricane Katrina]."
Tabak said the industry needs a business continuity plan that accounts for all potential hazards - including natural disasters like hurricanes, accidental disasters like E. coli outbreaks or deliberate terrorist attacks on the U.S. food supply - "to enable companies to have the ability to survive and recover.
"We need to put pressure on NGA, Food Marketing Institute and other organizations to help us put a blueprint together because we still have many questions."
In a separate discussion at the conference, Thomas K. Zaucha, president and chief executive officer of the National Grocers Association, cautioned that with the recent E. coli outbreaks, the federal government may get more involved in imposing regulations on the food industry.
"The pendulum may be about to swing back - maybe a bit too far - now that we have the FBI conducting criminal investigations into produce recalls to a degree we've not experienced before," Zaucha said, "and that could lead to a period of overregulation in U.S. agriculture, regardless of how the upcoming elections turn out."
In terms of developing a blueprint to cope with disasters, Col. John T. Hoffman, a senior research fellow at the National Center for Food Protection and Defense at the University of Minnesota's Center for Animal Health and Food Safety, said that in the event of any disruption to the U.S. food supply, "you have to make sure the infrastructure within your sector can be fixed. The federal government can provide guidelines, but NGA and FMI are more likely sources to help develop a blueprint."
To survive a disaster, Hoffman said, a company must understand its vulnerabilities, seek out lessons learned by others, develop a response plan that minimizes its exposure by building resilience into its infrastructure, develop a post-disaster management plan synchronized with pre-disaster planning, make sure it has a re-start and recovery plan, and train employees on how to respond to possible emergencies.
"If your company already has a plan," Hoffman said to the audience, "perhaps you would share it with NGA. Disasters do happen, and you've got to get through them and rely on those who have already been through them to share with others."
Lessons From Katrina
Sharing his experiences from Hurricane Katrina during the session was Jay Campbell Jr., president and CEO, Associated Grocers, Baton Rouge, La., who said his company had developed a contingency plan about four months before the hurricane hit, "though it didn't cover all we experienced."
Among the questions food companies must ask in developing a disaster plan, Campbell said, are whether power will be available, and if it isn't, how to get it; how to secure customer orders when lines of communication are interrupted; how to obtain inventory from suppliers when transportation is difficult - and, as in the case of Katrina, when vendors put products on allocation and doubled their freight rates because they could not re-fill their trucks after deliveries; how to transmit data when technology fails; how to deal with structural damage to facilities; how to cope with the inability of employees to come to work; how to ensure the safety of delivery trucks when people are desperate for food and water; and how to deal with waste removal. "If you have the proper preparation, recovery is more achievable," Campbell said.
"You need to set up a command and control center with someone who's in charge," Campbell said. "At AG that person wasn't me. I didn't have all the facts, and I trusted the judgment of the person we put in charge."
Campbell also praised the help AG got from the federal government. "The people who spend their time dotting the I's and crossing the T's did a fabulous job, and they don't get enough accolades."
However, the industry needs to get more help from the private sector, including universities, said R. Wes Harrison, associate professor of food and agribusiness marketing at Louisiana State University. "One thing universities can do is look at the risks and consequences of vulnerabilities in different areas of the economy, to provide science-based information and best practices and then provide appropriate training and education to the industry," he explained.
"In the past we concentrated primarily on food safety rather than food security, but since Sept. 11 and Katrina, we have re-focused our efforts."
