Exercise PROMETHEUS a two-day multi-agency control post exercise for the Food Standards Agency delivered by ExMS

RAB Consultants designed, planned and delivered a programme of three exercises in 2014/15 designed to test the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) new Incident Management Plan.  The post-exercise report has been published.

Exercise PROMETHEUS was a programme of three exercises in 2014/15 designed to test the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) new Incident Management Plan and 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.

A scenario was designed that escalated the incident to ‘Major’ in accordance with the Incident Management Plan, requiring cross-government response coordinated at Cabinet Office Briefing Room level. The food incident scenario included mycotoxin contamination of grain imported to the United Kingdom and an outbreak of E.coli O157 in Northern Ireland. The exercise commenced with impacts on human and animal health already being reported to the FSA by Public Health England and the Animal and Plant Health Agency.

RAB Consultants delivered the exercise across three control-posts in London, Cardiff and Belfast using our Exercise Messaging System ‘ExMS’.

The 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 to view on the FSA website.