Originally published June 28 2005
Expert fears world food supply would be greatly impaired by any flu pandemic
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
CTV.com reports that Dr. Michael Osterholm warned that a flu pandemic would seriously impair the production and distribution of the world's food supply, and suggested world policy makers begin planning for the sustainability of their country's food supply during a crisis.
An influenza pandemic would dramatically disrupt the processing and distribution of food supplies across the world, emptying grocery store shelves and creating crippling shortages for months, an expert warned Thursday.
Dr. Michael Osterholm suggested policy makers must start intensive planning to figure out how to ensure food supplies for their populations during a time when international travel may be grounded or severely cut back, when workers are too sick to process or deliver food and when people will be too fearful of disease to gather in restaurants.
"We're pretty much screwed right now if it happens tonight," said Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
Osterholm said the "just-in-time" delivery model by which modern corporations operate means food distribution networks don't have warehouses brimming with months worth of inventory.
Most grocery store chains have only several days worth of their most popular commodities in warehouses, he explained, with perhaps 30 days worth of stock for less popular items.
He pointed to the short-term shortages that occur when winter storms threaten communities, then suggested people envisage the possibility of those shortages dragging on for somewhere between 18 months and three years as the expected successive waves of pandemic flu buffet the world.
The lingering outbreak of the H5N1 avian flu strain that has decimated poultry stocks in wide swathes of Southeast Asia has influenza experts the world over losing sleep over the possibility the highly virulent virus will mutate or evolve to the point where it can spread to and among humans, starting a pandemic.
According to the official World Health Organization tally, at least 103 people have been infected with H5N1 influenza since December 2003 in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia.
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