POMS Abstract Number: 011-0371

Title: Managing Global Food Supply Chain Risks: A Scenario Planning Perspective
A. Deep Business School, Loughborough University Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK Email: a.deep@lboro.ac.uk || Phone: +44.1509 223176 S. Dani Business School, Loughborough University Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK Email: s.dani@lboro.ac.uk || Phone: +44.1509228830

POMS 20th Annual Conference Orlando, Florida U.S.A. May 1 to May 4, 2009

Introduction Food is a fundamental requisite for human existence. An agrarian society shows the simplistic form of existence where agriculture forms the core of the society and is the prime means of support and sustenance. That, however, no longer remains the foundation of most of today’s developed economies where food chains are increasingly becoming complex and multi tiered. The chains start with agriculture and ends ultimately, with household consumption. But the numbers of entities between these ends encompass geographical, economic, political and social extremes. This compounded over uncertainty occurring from natural disasters, climate changes, epidemics and terrorist threats place the food supply chain in a particularly vulnerable position. The recent Chinese milk scare which left thousands of Chinese babies ill after consuming melamine tainted milk powder produced by the Chinese Sanlu Group required urgent action by New Zealand, United States and the European Union to issue product warnings to contain the spread of melamine related kidney failure amongst infants in other countries. The more recent case of Salmonella outbreak in America traced to peanut butter manufactured at the Peanut Corporation of America, a factory in Blakely, Georgia caused the immediate recall of 2100 products in 17 categories.(FDA 2009) As organisations grow they focus on their ‘core competencies’ and analyse value addition as the prime factor