Fragile food supply chains: reacting to risks

Abstract

Despite extensive food safety legislation, there have been significant food safety incidents in the recent past. The effects of food contamination and other food safety-related incidents permeate rapidly across the different entities of the supply chain as a result of particularly complex and multi-tiered supply chains in the food sector. There is a requirement for other reactive measures to contain the spread further across the supply chain once the issue has been identified. The research approach for the paper is based around the use of secondary data on major food safety-related incidents and the after effects. The research seeks to identify and understand the varied approaches, the contributing factors and the relevant legislation towards risk control as a reactionary measure in the food sector. It then proposes a conceptual model for risk mitigation from a reactionary standpoint which is retrospectively validated using selected case studies.

Keywords:

• food supply chain
• supply chain risk management
• reactionary risk control

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the support that the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK, has extended towards them for this work. The authors are grateful to the editors and two anonymous reviewers for their feedback and the opportunity to improve this paper.