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The author aims to assess the spread of avian flu, its impact on businesses operating in the USA and overseas, and the measures required for corporate preparedness.

Six Sigma DMAIC process is used to analyze avian flu's impact and how an epidemic could affect large US business operations worldwide. Wal‐Mart and Dell Computers were chosen as one specializes in retail and the other manufacturing.

The study identifies avian flu pandemic risks including failure modes on Wal‐Mart and Dell Computers global operations. It reveals the factors that reinforce avian‐flu pandemic's negative impact on company global supply chains. It also uncovers factors that balance avian‐flu pandemic's impact on their global supply chains.

Avian flu and its irregularity affect the research outcomes because its spread could fluctuate based on so many factors that could come into play. Further, the potential cost to manufacturers and other supply chain partners is relatively unknown. As a relatively new phenomenon, quantitative data were not available to determine immediate costs.

In this decade, the avian influenza H5N1 virus has killed millions of poultry in Asia, Europe and Africa. This flu strain can infect and kill humans who come into contact with this virus. An avian influenza H5N1 outbreak could lead to a devastating effect on global food supply, business services and business operations.

The study provides guidance on what global business operation managers can do to prepare for such events, as well as how avian flu progression to a pandemic can disrupt such operations. This study raises awareness about avian flu's impact on businesses and humans and also highlights the need to create contingency plans for corporate preparedness to avoid incurring losses.

Epidemiologists are concerned the next deadly global cognition will be a new kind of deadly flu which humans have no resistance. Since the 1960s, their alarm has been focused on a bird (avian) virus (H5N1). This virus is generally harmless in its host species, but it is extremely deadly when contracted by humans. H5N1 mutates quickly and tends to pick up genes from flu viruses that affect other species. The flu is far more contagious and harder to contain than the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) virus. It is projected that 30‐40 per cent of the population would be infected in a H5N1 flu pandemic, and as many as one‐third would die. The 1918 Spanish flu caused 20 to 50 million deaths world wide. One scientist observed that the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic could have caused civilisation to disappear within a few weeks. Currently, more than 50 million chickens have been slaughtered in eight Asian countries in efforts to curb the spread of avian influenza. This article examines the roots and dangers of the potential avian influenza pandemic, examining the business and social ramifications that could ensue if the worst case scenario occurs.

The spread of bird flu outside of Asia, particularly in Africa and Europe, topped headlines in 2006. The migration of wild birds brought the virus to Europe, where for the first time it spread to productive livestock, bringing it closer to the Western world. Due to today's globalized and highly interconnected world, the consequences of a potential bird flu pandemic are expected to be much more severe than those of the Spanish flu, which killed 50-100 million people between 1918 and 1921. A vaccine for the bird virus is currently not available. As of July 2006, 232 cases of human infection had been documented, mostly through direct contact with poultry. Of those, 134 people died. The best medication available to treat bird flu was Roche's antiviral drug Tamiflu. However, Tamiflu was not widely available; current orders of government bodies would not be fulfilled until the end of 2008. Well aware that today's avian flu might become a global pandemic comparable to the Spanish flu, Roche CEO Franz Humer had to decide how Roche should respond. While the pharmaceutical industry continued its research efforts on vaccines and medications, Tamiflu could play an important role by protecting healthcare workers and helping to contain the virus---or at least slow down its spread. Due to patent protection and a complicated production process with scarce raw ingredients, Roche had been the only producer of the drug. Partly in response to U.S. political pressure, in November 2005 Roche allowed Gilead to produce Tamiflu as well. Even so, it would take at least until late 2007 for Roche and Gilead to meet the orders of governments worldwide. The issue was a difficult one for Roche: What were the risks; what were the opportunities? If a pandemic occurred before sufficient stockpiles of Tamiflu had been built up, would Roche be held responsible? What steps, if any, should Roche take with respect to patent protection and production licensing in the shadow of a potential pandemic?

Students will weigh the benefits of short-term profit maximization against the risks that a highly uncertain event could pose to a business and consider nonstandard approaches to mitigate these risks. Students will discuss the challenges of addressing low-probability, high-impact events; potential conflicts with the short-term view of the stock market and analyst community; and challenges of the patent protection model for drugs for life-threatening diseases.

The purpose of this paper is to increase awareness about the issues the world and, more so, Bangladesh faces in overcoming avian influenza. Also, the purpose is to examine whether the avian influenza situation and communication strategy adopted in the country follows risk communication principles.

An extensive literature review using recently published works, government documents, and organizational reports is employed.

If not controlled, avian influenza has the potential to become a global pandemic with extremely high morbidity and mortality rates. Bangladesh presently has policies and programs in place to attempt to control the virus but many challenges, such as the implementation of an effective risk communication strategy, remain.

This paper identifies a wide variety of sources that would be useful information for policy makers and program managers.

If you go running in Chicago in the early morning, as the first light glances and reflects on Lake Michigan, you can hear the great flocks of wild geese stirring and calling before you can see them. They have come down from the Arctic, where the winter comes to the Midwest just as the flu season begins. They crowd in the cove with the gulls and the dogs run toward them, and they scatter and fill the air. They will land at the high school in town, in the farms along the interstate, and in the City Zoo, with the ducks and the pigeons.

Purpose – This chapter considers the social politics of H5N1 (“avian influenza”), the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, and the response to it within the context of the history of pandemic influenzas and the continuing need for robust preventative public health systems more generally. In particular, the author considers how the borders between nations, species, and individuals are thrown into relief and called into question by influenza outbreaks and their management.

Methodology/approach – This work relies on literature review, media research, and critical and interpretative sociological methods.

Findings – While panic surrounding new and potentially highly virulent influenza strains is reasonable, such panic is not sustainable and belies the fact that every year presents the danger of a pandemic. This chapter argues that, if public health systems only respond to immediate panic and fail to consider how quickly airborne diseases can cross all sorts of borders, they do not attend to the real need for far-seeing, long-term, internationally collaborative disease prevention and disaster preparedness.

Contribution to the field – The author offers a critical and wellness- and prevention-oriented perspective on what priorities should be emphasized in the rapidly growing fields of disaster studies and disaster preparedness, which, by their nature, tend to be crisis oriented and focused on the micro-term, with planning done on a case-by-case basis. Such a narrow focus can render preventative health systems inflexible and unable to rise to the challenge of a disease that can spread easily through casual contact.

The purpose of the paper is to put across the concerns about the potential health hazards to consumers of products following various food scandals (i.e. BSE and the foot and mouth epidemics) have resurfaced again in the poultry market with avian influenza. Changes in patterns of consumption inevitably follow such incidences and the behaviours adopted very often follow risk assessment of the situation. The paper aims to examine and explain the drivers of changes of consumption in a unique segment of the market.

Students were chosen in accordance with previous studies of this type as they represent a homogeneous group, well informed and significant in numbers. The work of Slovic was used to construct a questionnaire to assess consumer risk and this was then extended to the area of consumption change according to the strategies identified by Roselius.

Through a correlation of risk based variables with changes in behaviour, a consumption change model is developed which demonstrates that knowledge, assessment of the potential for disaster and experience from past food scandals are the main drivers of change.

The research was performed immediately after the confirmation of the first H5N1 case in the UK and gives insight on how consumer behaviour is influenced by such an event.

Outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has created the catastrophic situation, it has crippled all the economic activities and seized off the operations of food supply chain (FSC). Disrupted FSC escalated the societal concerns related to food safety and security. The purpose of this study is to consolidate various issues, exploring the perspectives associated with the agricultural practices, food industries and society concerns related with the FSC performance system dynamics amid of COVID-19 pandemic.

To structure this work, a detailed research literature insight focussing on the key findings associated with the past disease outbreaks like influenza, avian flu, Ebola, bird flu, SARS, foot and mouth disease and ongoing phase of COVID-19, encompassing the perspective related with various agricultural and concerned supply chain practices is clustered. Furthermore, issues having relevancy with the notion of this work, sourced from platforms of print and electronic media have been incorporated to ground the reality associated with the impacts, for better visualisation of the perspectives.

This study outlays the key findings which are relevant with the past pandemic outbreaks from the core of the research literature. It details the impact of the current COVID-19 scenario on the various FSC operations, focussing on dimensions allied with the industry, economic and society concerns. For the same, to mitigate the effects, relief measures focussing on the short- and long-term perspectives have been incorporated. Steps ramped up by the Government of India (GOI) to safeguard masses from the threat of food security, accelerate pace of the FSC operations and upscale operating capacities of the industries and agriculture practices have incorporated.

Presented work is persuaded amid of the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions hence it outlays the theoretical perspectives only. But, these perspectives portray the ongoing scenario's impacts, extending its implication to the people coming from the industry and academia background. This study can felicitate the government bodies to make them familiar with the various impacts which indented the FSCs, food industries and added woes to the society concerns.

India is the second largest populated nation of the world, and outspread of the COVID-19 has capsized the FSCs and raised the various instances, making population vulnerable to the threats of food insecurity. This study encompasses effect of the FSC disruption by incorporating its effect on the food industries practices, societal issues and extending possible relief measures to restructure the FSC dynamics. As of now, study focussing on the Indian FSC concerns, detailing of impacts due to pandemic outbreak, relief measures to sail out of the hard times are not available.

While academia, industry and government have made various efforts to ameliorate the impacts of Covid-19, no study has hitherto used an integrative framework to assess the reactions of all three of these sectors to previous multinational epidemics. Such fragmentation ignores the holistic nature of crisis management. To better understand the impacts of health crises on tourism, this study aims to examine the past literature related to academic, industrial and governmental responses to multinational epidemics through the lens of the triple helix model.

Based on preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyzes and the best-fit approach, this paper conducts a systematic review of the literature published between 2000 and 2020 on five multinational epidemics that had significant impacts on the tourism industry: food and mouth disease, severe acute respiratory syndrome, bird flu (novel influenza A and avian flu), Ebola and middle east respiratory syndrome. Thematic analysis was used to identify major themes in the 63 relevant articles identified.

No substantial increase was found in the quantity of multinational epidemic-related studies after 2010. Collectively, the 10 identified themes strongly emphasized economic recovery.

No existing tourism-related study examines reactions toward multiple health crises by integrating three important sectors: academia, industry and government. This study fills that research gap with a systematic review of past multinational epidemics and proposes an integrative framework. It also provides recommendations for future research and health-crisis management practices.

Aims to highlight how food contamination, whether accidental or deliberate, can have far‐reaching impact on individuals, organisations and the food supply chain.

This paper focuses on the use of agents such as foreign animal disease (FAD). The research included a literature review and evaluation to determine the mechanisms currently in place to counter‐act bioterrorism in the food supply chain with particular emphasis on poultry.

Food terrorism, where the contaminant is a FAD, would cause severe economic disruption by direct costs due to the culling of livestock and the compensation paid to growers. It could also lead to consequential loss to the local or national economy, loss of consumer confidence in the food supply chain and loss of political confidence and support following the mass culling of livestock, with some agents having the ability to impact directly on human health.

This paper analyses the current state of preparedness for food terrorism in the food supply chain and is of relevance to a cross‐section of the industry.