A safe food supply for Asia

Consumer habits, infrastructure gaps, and rapid growth make improving food safety in Asia a challenge. Retailers are in the best position to meet it.
SEPTEMBER 2009 • Chris Bradley, Todd Guild, and Grace Hu

Source: Marketing & Sales Practice McKinsey

This tragedy—one of the most severe among dozens of major food safety failures in Asia from 2005 to 2008—underscores the urgency of modernizing the region’s food supply chains, whose safety and sustainability concern shoppers, suppliers, retailers, and governments alike. Food safety is vital in all markets, but consumer habits, infrastructure gaps, and rapid growth make improvements in Asia particularly difficult.

A single failure can create safety problems that spread unpredictably along the food supply chain. Its complexity—from growers to wholesalers and warehousers to transporters and finally to retailers and consumers—hampers attempts at improvement. Safety issues, often lost in scientific and regulatory protocols, are difficult to grasp.

Our research, undertaken in cooperation with the Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council (CCRRC),1 shows that while the task is daunting, countries can manage much of the risk by focusing on two or three critical areas, depending largely on a market’s level of development. If regulators, retailers, and others in the supply chain concentrate on these areas, the quality of the food on consumers’ tables can improve significantly.
more: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Marketing/Sectors_Regions/A_safe_food_supply_for_Asia_2440