By Tony Goodger, head of marketing and communications, AIMS
The National Risk Register is a bi-annual Cabinet Office document last published in July 2025, and which sets out 89 reasonable worst case scenarios for a wide range of “acute” risks from terrorism to civil unrest, sustained power outages to disruption to oil supplies as a result of geo-pollical tensions.
Each of the risks assessed meet a threshold for inclusion as they are considered, in the event of them occurring, as presenting a substantial impact on the UK’s safety, security and/or critical systems at national level and which would require an emergency response.
Over the last few weeks there have been reports of several new outbreaks of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI). Naturally I along with the rest of the poultry industry hope that we are not going to see a repeat of the 2021 to 2023 outbreak, the biggest to date.
No doubt an assessment of that outbreak showed that the threshold had been reached on their matrix of likelihood verses impact to include a major outbreak of HPAI.
HPAI’s assessment is based on a reasonable worst case scenario of a highly virulent strain that is “unlikely to transmit easily to humans” with the outbreak being introduced via wild birds and leading to 250 large commercial premises experiencing infection in a 6 to 8 month period.
Using this scenario the NRR assessment is Likelihood 3 (between 1 and 3%) and Impact 3 (moderate).
Interestingly, HPAI’s 3:3 risk is identical to that given in 2025 for “Disruption to global oil trade routes”. No doubt given the current war in the Middle East the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz this will be being reassessed as a matter of urgency.
Of note is that the sole focus of the risk to oil is purely on the impact to energy and transport costs but fails to make any mention of the associated disruption that we are all now experiencing.
In fact, throughout the NRR supply chain resilience is only really mentioned in relation to risks in the transport infrastructure, the impact of severe weather and volcanic activity and an attack on a fellow NATO member.
Nowhere does the NRR make any reference to the UK’s food security nor our resilience to major global shocks which have impacts for food production from fertilizer, to feed to CO₂ despite the “acute risk” to our poultry production and processing.
Remember a past government mantra of “Tough on Crime and Tough on the Causes of Crime”?
Who could forget?
And of course, it was never delivered which makes me and my colleagues at AIMS very concerned in relation to the current Whitehall strapline of “Food Security is National Security”.
I would love to understand what our politicians think “Food Security” means.
Is it that the UK should grow enough food to feed itself and therefore be more able to withstand market turbulence?
On a small island with huge demand of land and an ever growing population the ability for the UK to be food secure is, I believe, both unrealistic and undeliverable.
It’s time to shift the syntax to “Food Resilience is National Security” with those tasked with national risk incorporating the essential need for food into country’s national and local crisis planning and placing a much broader assessment of what options are available to feed both the human population and the country’s poultry and other livestock in an emergency scenario.