Background to the report

The food supply chain covers all stages from food production to consumption and includes agriculture, manufacturing, storage and distribution, wholesale, retail and catering. It is complex and highly interconnected, with goods often moving through multiple stages and locations before reaching consumers.

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The system is primarily industry‑led, and businesses are responsible for managing their own operations and resilience to disruptions.

The government has designated food as one of 13 Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) sectors that it considers essential to the country’s functioning. However, the food supply chain faces a wide range of risks that can cause disruption. These include ‘acute risks’ – events requiring an emergency response – such as extreme weather, cyber-attacks, energy disruptions and animal, plant or human disease outbreaks.

It also faces longer-term ‘chronic risks’ such as climate change, which can gradually erode resilience over time. Risks can be interrelated and may trigger or exacerbate other risks. For example, climate change is increasing the likelihood of extreme weather events.

Disruption to food supply can lead to food price inflation, less consumer choice, and vulnerable people struggling to access food, which can worsen issues such as food poverty and the health effects of poor diet. It can also increase operating costs and disrupt operations for businesses, and lead to significant costs for the government.

The government’s National Risk Register highlights several risks that, while considered low in likelihood, could cause catastrophic disruption (the highest impact category) if they occurred, and result in food shortages because of a failure of the food supply chain. Examples of these risks include a national power outage, pandemic, nuclear accident, or large-scale chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack.

Scope of the report

This report examines whether the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), working with key public and private organisations, is taking effective action to ensure the food supply chain is resilient to disruptions. It assesses:

  • the key risks affecting the food supply chain and how Defra and industry have responded to recent disruptions
  • Defra’s understanding of risks to the food supply chain and its actions to improve resilience
  • Defra’s preparedness for catastrophic disruption to the food supply chain

Video summary

Rich Sullivan-Jones, the report’s director, summarises our findings.

Conclusions

To date, Defra has largely relied on the private sector to manage disruptions to food supply. This has been possible because of the resilience in the UK food system, which can source from all over the world, and commercial incentives on businesses to invest against risks and respond during a crisis.

However, the sector’s ability to withstand catastrophic events that cause severe disruption has not been tested, and Defra’s actions in recent years have not been sufficient to ensure the supply chain is resilient to such events.

Defra has recognised that risks of significant disruption are rising, and it has increased its capacity to support strategic work to build resilience within the food supply chain, communities and households. But this work remains at an early stage, and it is timely for Defra to assess whether its current approach and preparedness remain in line with the increasing level of risk.

Defra could make better use of existing frameworks – such as using the government’s ‘CNI Knowledge Base’ tool to identify critical food supply chain infrastructure – and learn from approaches taken in other countries. There is also opportunity to strengthen preparedness for emergencies by increasing the transparency of the government’s planning assumptions and testing these with local government and industry.

Some activities to reduce risk and increase resilience may have cost implications for the government, businesses or households. Defra will need to be clear on the level of risk it can accept to make informed decisions about its priorities, and whether these costs and their potential to increase resilience represent value for money.

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Press release

View press release (4 Sep 2026)

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