Exercise Prometheus also aimed to improve the overall response to food
incidents in
the future working with staff and key partners from government and
industry.
The programme included two table-top exercises - one internal
and one multi-agency and a two-day multi-agency control-post exercise
in March 2015.
Scenarios were designed that escalated the incident to ‘Major’ in
accordance
with the Incident Management Plan, requiring cross-government
response coordinated at Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR) level.
The food
incident scenario included mycotoxin contamination of grain
imported to
the UK and an outbreak of E.coli O157 in Northern Ireland.
The exercise began with impacts on human and animal health already
being
reported to the FSA by Public Health England and the Animal and
Plant
Health Agency.
The exercise was successfully delivered across three control-posts in
London, Cardiff and Belfast in March 2015.
FSA concluded "Exercise Prometheus delivered a successful test of
the
FSA’s IMP and has identified a number of ways in which we can
strengthen
our capability and resilience arrangements. It will, amongst
other things,
result in the development of clearer understanding of how
we can work most effectively with the cross-government structures for
scientific advice in
high-level incidents and will lead to improved
management of major food and
feed incidents requiring co-ordinated
effort from FSA partners and
stakeholders."
The post-exercise report is available on the FSA website together with a
paper discussed by FSA's Board on 9/9/15..
