The agrifood sector and governments must collaborate on it.   Ottawa—As well as the food supply system has performed during the COVID-19 pandemic, the last few months show the need for a national agrifood emergency response plan, says Rory McAlpine, Senior Vice-President of Maple Leaf Foods. While there are some sector plans and Agriculture Canada has an emergency management office, Canada needs a national response plan with the participation of key agencies, McAlpine said in a webinar on the resiliency of the Canadian food system. It was sponsored by the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute and the Arrell Food Institute as part of its Growing Stronger initiative. The agrifood sector should “learn and think about how we can better plan for the future should something else happen,” he said. Hopefully federal and provincial agencies “will participate so that we really have an honest conversation about what we've learned. “We've struggled with AgriRecovery as a delivery vehicle for programming given the nature of federal-provincial cost-sharing and the need for timely decisions. How we think about resiliency, and prevention and preparation is really critical and having the pre-emptive plans is so important as this pandemic has demonstrated.” How Canada deals with future emergencies “needs to be thought about, needs to be planned out and put in place.” Mechanisms and processes to resolve issues and deliver programs normally “need to be quickly adapted and you need to have a different mindset when you get into a crisis.” An emergency plan has to look at the different ways the food system could be impacted by pandemics and disasters. “If you had to actually take some control to get food distributed, would we know how to do it?” The food system gained a lot of public confidence during the pandemic, he said. “People are very much more aware of these issues of food security, food affordability and food sovereignty. It's an opportunity for us to take advantage of the goodwill that exists because we've been able to keep our grocery stores largely supplied and think about how we can come out of this stronger, not just more resilient but absolutely stronger and more prosperous through some better planning.” The emergency plan could also tie into the National Food Policy the government is working on, McAlpine said. The council that will oversee the food policy can benefit from the lessons learned during the pandemic. “There's a longer-term question of strategy and economic priorities for the future and where does our agrifood sector fit as a continual driver of growth, prosperity and employment. But in the short term we've certainly learned some lessons from a food system that's designed for speed, efficiency and lowest cost means we've got very little resiliency or very little redundancy. We've got high speed production lines, as best we can we've got scaled facilities and certainly our business has invested heavily to achieve that so that we can be competitive, but those same assets can be vulnerable.” Other pandemics may come our way, he said. “We've been lucky to have escaped a significant pandemic of this nature for some time.” “If a disease like H5N1 in poultry “were ever to cycle through other species, pigs particularly, and into humans it would have had a far greater mortality impact and we have to assume that could be the next one so we have to act accordingly.” Alex Binkley is a freelance journalist and writes for domestic and international publications about agriculture, food and transportation issues. He's also the author of two science fiction novels with more in the works.