From avian flu and livestock disease outbreaks to geopolitical tensions, extreme weather and transportation disruptions, today's protein supply chains face unprecedented volatility.
Given more than 80% of members of Food Shippers of America (FSA) are involved in managing protein-based products in their purchasing and supply chains activities, such volatility can create significant challenges for most members. For food manufacturers, distributors and retailers, proteins represent some of the most valuable — and vulnerable — ingredients in their supply chains.
Unlike many shelf-stable commodities, proteins such as beef, poultry, pork, seafood and dairy products often have limited shelf lives, stringent temperature requirements and relatively few qualified suppliers. A disruption at a single processing plant or supplier can quickly ripple through production schedules, customer commitments and financial performance.
In particularly, he says there are big risks associated with animal meats originating in the supply chain: “The biggest short-term, on-farm risk stems from possible animal disease disruptions. Inner-industry and post farm-gate, labor disruptions around converting live animals into edible consumer products is top of mind as a risk.”
Food shippers understand that because proteins often represent one of the highest-cost components of finished food products, even modest supply disruptions — from original source to final point of consumption — can significantly impact margins. Protein supply chains also remain highly susceptible to external disruptions, including:
“Perishability compresses the response window,” she explains. “A missed pickup, refrigeration failure, border delay or documentation error can reduce shelf life and threaten production schedules and customer commitments. Often, the loss comes from several small failures occurring in sequence rather than one dramatic event. For protein, a sourcing decision is not complete when the supplier is approved. The product, market eligibility, cold-chain capacity, documentation, route and recovery plan must all be executable.”
For perishable inventory of meats, the objective is neither maximum stock nor minimum stock, advises Yañez. “It is having enough usable shelf life in the right location when demand occurs. Policies should distinguish among fresh, chilled and frozen products and incorporate first-expired, first-out rotation, lot and expiry tracking, minimum remaining shelf-life requirements at receipt, disciplined receiving windows, and replenishment based on supplier and transit-time variability.”
For many food companies, contingency planning is no longer simply an emergency response exercise. It has become an essential component of supply chain strategy.
Rather than waiting until a disruption occurs, organizations are developing predefined response plans that identify alternative suppliers, transportation providers, production facilities and inventory strategies before they're needed.
These contingency plans typically address questions such as:
Having these decisions made before a disruption occurs can dramatically reduce response times while minimizing service interruptions.
Nestlé has one of the most comprehensive descriptions of contingency plans in place. Like many smart food shippers, its public mitigation strategies include business continuity and disaster recovery plans for key facilities, multiple sourcing options, localized sourcing where practical, commodity price risk management, supply chain risk assessment, and responsible and traceability programs.
Nestlé’s plan is essentially a layered contingency model to prevent disruption, detect disruption early, switch suppliers or production, and recover operations quickly.
Perhaps the biggest shift occurring across protein procurement and supply chains is the move from transactional purchasing toward strategic supplier partnerships.
Rather than selecting suppliers based primarily on price, food manufacturers increasingly view suppliers as collaborative partners responsible for helping maintain business continuity. These partnerships often include:
Open communication has become equally important. Organizations that maintain regular dialogue with protein suppliers are often able to identify potential production constraints weeks before they become market-wide disruptions. That additional visibility provides valuable time to activate contingency plans or shift sourcing strategies.
One of the clearest lessons learned by food shippers involving recent disruptions is the danger of relying too heavily on a single supplier or production region. Many organizations are now adopting multi-sourcing strategies for critical protein categories. Rather than depending on one supplier for 100 percent of demand, companies are qualifying multiple suppliers capable of producing similar specifications. Although this approach may require additional supplier audits, quality testing and procurement complexity, it significantly reduces operational risk.
“Effective diversification is not simply increasing the number of suppliers,” says Yañez. “It means reducing exposure to the same underlying point of failure. Two suppliers may still rely on the same plant, production region, port, border crossing, cold-storage facility or transportation corridor. If those dependencies are not understood, a company may appear diversified while remaining exposed to one disruption.”
Food companies are addressing this by qualifying secondary suppliers, facilities, origins and product specifications before they are needed, she adds: “That process should include food-safety and import eligibility, available capacity, trial orders, allocation commitments, lead times, documentation and total delivered cost.”
Technology also is playing a growing role in strengthening protein supply chains. In fact, supply chain visibility platforms like Project44, FourKites, Tive, and Descartes MacroPoint now provide procurement and logistics teams with near real-time insights into inventory levels, shipment locations, supplier performance and transportation disruptions.
In addition, predictive analytics further enhance resilience by helping organizations identify potential risks before they affect production. These tools enable companies to:
When combined with collaborative supplier relationships, greater visibility allows organizations to respond more quickly and make better-informed sourcing decisions.
The lowest-cost sourcing strategy is no longer always the lowest-risk strategy. Many food manufacturers, retailers and distributors now recognize that investing in supplier diversification, strategic partnerships, contingency planning and digital visibility creates long-term business value.
Although maintaining multiple qualified suppliers or additional inventory may increase costs in the short term, these investments often prove far less expensive than production shutdowns, lost sales or damaged customer relationships resulting from protein shortages.
As supply chain uncertainty continues to evolve, resilience is becoming a defining competitive advantage. Organizations that proactively strengthen supplier partnerships, diversify sourcing strategies and prepare for disruption will be better positioned to maintain product availability, protect customer service and navigate whatever challenges emerge next.
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