Daily Management Review

British Government Hires Former Nestle’s Executive For ‘War Room’ Food Security


03/23/2020


Chris Tyas joins DEFRA as its Food Supply’s Director to contain situation over food security as the COVID-19 pandemic deepens.



Chris Tyas, a former executive of Nestle, was appointed by the government of Britain to take charge of a “war room” designed to look into the country’s food security when the country is struck by the outbreak of coronavirus. The British ministers took this step and flew in Tyas as they saw the coronavirus pandemic deepening.
 
Chris Tyas has run Nestle, “the multinational's food supply chain”, for a period of five years while at the “war room” Tyas has been given a “senior role in Whitehall” with the deepening COVID-19 crisis. David Kennedy, an official from the “Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs”, in short DEFRA, gave out a memo to retails executives mentioning about the appointment of Mr. Tyas. While the memo informed that Tyas is going to join as the director of food supply at DEFRA, as he possess “great experience... managing major crises in supply chains across the world”.
 
The retail heads were also informed:
“the current crisis will continue to create huge challenges for the food supply of the nation”.
 
Accordingly, the DEFRA led by George Eustice, the Environment Secretary, has come up with a “food resilience strategy that has at its core the running of a 'war room'”. The memo elaborated on the priorities of this strategy as to “triage immediate issues and focus the resources of the whole industry on their resolution [and] to plan ahead, with a horizon of the next few months, in order to anticipate pinch points”.
 
Moreover, Mr. Kennedy urged retailers to pick two individuals for daily coordinating “supply chain and operational issues” with the government through conference calls. While Reuters added:
“The request for retail expertise underlines the unprecedented scope of the collaboration between the government and private sector that has emerged in recent days as the coronavirus pandemic escalates”.
 
 
References:
reuters.com
news.sky.com