Properties of the Salmonella Case
How To The Finland Experienced An Outbreak Of Salmonella?
In the year 1995-2001, Finland experienced an outbreak of the Salmonella infection which is passed on from poultry to humans. The contagious Salmonella bacterium transmits from the animals themselves, their food, or the environment to which they are exposed (Wobeser, 2013). This case describes some of the risk management procedures that the government of Finland undertook so as to monitor and curb the risk of human salmonella infections spread from poultry. Finland’s Ministry of Agriculture and Farming, the authority that is responsible for regulating food production in Finland, set up a National Salmonella Control Programme whose mandate was to constrain the number of human salmonella infections acquired from food. Through the Programme, there was removal from the production chain of breeding flocks that were detected as being salmonella positive; there was also heat treatment of meat from broiler flocks that were salmonella positive. The interventions made through the programme, though without any formal research, kept the prevalence of the disease at an acceptable level.
The salmonella case has five major properties. The first is the application field which entails the prevalence of the salmonella bacterium in the poultry production chain and the transmission to humans. The second is the decision maker in the management of the risk and that is the Finish Ministry of Agriculture and Poultry. The third is additional stakeholders: consumers, and poultry farmers. The fourth property is the reason for undertaking the study; and it was the need to evaluate the implemented intervention program to examine its effect and appropriateness, as a political jurisdiction, and for research interest. The fifth aspect is the methodology used and the Programme made use of the Bayesian probabilistic inference model, cost-benefit analysis, Monte Carlo simulation, and Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling. The intervention program to fight the salmonella infection outbreak and the risks it involved was evaluated by, and as demanded by the Ministry, the Department of Risk Assessment at the National Veterinary and Food Research Institute.
The risk assessment model that was used in the broiler production chain to deal with the risk of salmonella constituted three parts: the Primary Production Inference Model, the Secondary Production Simulation Model, and the Consumption Inference Model (Laupland et.al, 2009). After the assessment of the risk of human salmonella infections spread through broiler meat, the next step was the managing the risk. The risk management process employed by the government of Finland through the relevant ministries involved six steps. The first step was identifying the risk, the salmonella infection and the monetary loss incurred by the broiler producers; the second step was evaluating the risk to gauge the probability of its transmission and prevalence, with and without the modelled intervention programme. Also, the consequences of the human salmonella infections, and the cost-benefit analysis; development and evaluation of risk management methods which included removing of detected salmonella-positive breeding flocks, and heat-treating contaminated broiler meat. The other steps included making of risk management decision to continue with the intervention program; and finally the evaluation of the solutions implemented.
The Risk Assessment and Management Process
As observed from the salmonella case, every poultry meat consumer is faced with the risk of the infection and the control to the risk mainly depends on the procedures employed at the production chain. The government of Finland, as well as the governments of other countries should ensure a safe and thoroughly inspected poultry production chain to eradicate the risk of human salmonella infections. The combination of both flock removal and heating of contaminated meat ought to be used together in the event of salmonella infections because as seen in the case in Finland, they were effective.
This is a case that highlights an issue that occurred in Shell Company in the year 2004. The basis of the issue is that in 2004, executives heading Shell’s exploration and production department made an exaggeration on the size of the company’s reserves at the time. Even when the claim of the unrealistic estimates got to the media and the public, the executives failed to act and the problem, thus, escalated. Apparently the said executives had opted to play along with the figures with the hope that future growth of the company’s reserves would account for the overstatement. As the company faced insufficiency in growth to justify the said historic bookings and prove their stated reserves, it had no choice but to downgrade the stated amount. In doing so it downgraded an equivalent of 4.35 billion barrels i.e. around 22 percent of its entire reserves, from ‘proven’ category to ‘less certain’ category (Olsen, Lee, & Blasingame, 2011). Since the most valuable asset for an oil company is its reserves, the downgrading did not only embarrass Shell Company but it also cost the company many existing and potential investors. The share price of the company also got hammered as a result of the issue.
In response to the issue and the uproar by the shareholders, a number of resignations in the management levels of the company occurred. One of these resignations was by Shell group’s chairman Sir Philip Watts who left the company abruptly, compounding the problem even further. The management of the issue was spearheaded by Jeroen van der Veer, the chairman who took over the company after Watts. Veer believed that Shell’s survival, following the issue, depended on the ability by the company to transform its structure and processes. In dealing with the situation, the issue management process involved identifying a chain of global, standardized processes that would impact over 80 of Shell’s operating units. The processes meant changes to the operations of Shell Company and though they were vital to the long term survival of the company, in the short term they proved unpopular because some countries lost market share. However, the leadership insisted on the need by all the units of the company globally to adopt to the change programme that the company had put in place. The said change programme was by the name Shell Downstream-one.
Importance of a Safe and Inspected Poultry Production Chain
Through Shell Downstream-One the changes required were mandated to all the major players in all of Shell’s markets for them to know and understand what was required of them and why, and that way they drove the transformational growth the company aimed for (Bacharach, 2016). The aim of the programme was to put processes that deemed standard and simpler in all countries and regions above the individual and local needs of a particular Shell unit. These processes were inclusive of common invoicing finance systems, to even larger more centralized distribution networks. The team of experts that was used to deliver the changes included senior leaders, implementation consultants, experts in in-house subject matters, and external change experts. Through them, and before any meaningful change got delivered, there was the modelling and driving of the new behaviors required; briefing of people whom the change would impact; and discussing and mitigating potential problem areas. The change management in Shell which started and ended under the leadership of Jeroen van der Veer was a success. The investors are confident and the company is at a better position that it was in 2004. The Shell Downstream-One is still an ongoing programme that continues to benefit Shell Company.
This is a case study that delves in the nuclear disaster that happened in the Fukushima power plant in Japan in the year 2011, and the steps that the Japanese government and other stakeholders undertook to mitigate the danger of radiation that faced the residents of that area. The nuclear meltdown occurred alongside two other natural disasters, a tsunami and an earthquake. The Japanese government’s response to the nuclear disaster at Fukushima failed to observe fundamental principles of good crisis communication. It is a striking reminder that advanced planning and training of all stakeholders is necessary to face such challenges. Though the Japanese people exhibited stoicism and resilience at the time, the Japanese government, on the other hand is subject to criticism on how it handled the crisis because it took actions that ran counter to the vital elements of appropriate crisis communication. The government mishandled its communication with the public. The top stakeholders- such as the executives, politicians, and bureaucrats- in their ‘iron triangle’ relationships circumvented rules and regulations for their own benefits and overlook the risks that the nuclear plant posed (Tateno & Yokoyama, 2013).
With thorough preparation, the Japanese government could have organized its information processing and sharing, and communicated effectively. Rather, Tokyo Electric Power Company and the Japanese government kept reassuring the population and conveying partial information even when disaster was looming. According to (Booth, 2015) it is important that an overseeing authority be truthful, transparent, and forthcoming throughout a crisis so as to remove uncertainty and to ensure trust in the authority. The three fundamental things that the Japanese government could have done to avert or mitigate the disaster were proper organization, appropriate message content, and sufficient synchronization. Firstly, therefore, the government should have also relied on an informal organization rather that only the formal organization that it relied on and that constituted government and TEPCO officials. The government ought also to have been fast in putting up the team as it did so five days into the crisis. Secondly, the government should have been clear and transparent in the message it communicated without holding back necessary information and keeping their estimates in the absence of data. Thirdly, there ought to have been synchronization of crisis management and crisis communication; it would have led to proper consideration of actions taken such as the extension of the evacuation radius.
One of the measures undertaken in combating the radiation risks posed to the population in the surrounding areas was evacuating an area of 30km around the plant and also establishing a 30km no-fly zone around the Fukushima facility; around 47000 residents left their homes following the evacuation process (Nakoski & Lazo, 2011). To stop the radiation, the workers and other emergency responders cooled the reactors using water trucks, helicopters, and even pumping water from the sea. As a recommendation to avoid a similar crisis in the future, communication of threats in the plant and its environs should be done efficiently without creating loopholes. Action to deal with the risks should be taken within the shortest time possible; more importantly, there should always be up-to-date measures enable manage such a crisis proactively.
References
Booth, S. A. (2015). Crisis management strategy: Competition and change in modern enterprises. Routledge.
Bacharach, S. B. (2016). The Agenda Mover: When Your Good Idea is Not Enough. Cornell University Press.
Laupland, K. B., Schønheyder, H. C., Kennedy, K. J., Lyytikäinen, O., Valiquette, L., Galbraith, J., … & Kibsey, P. (2009). Rationale for and protocol of a multi-national population-based bacteremia surveillance collaborative. BMC research notes, 2(1), 146.
Nakoski, J., & Lazo, T. (2011). Fukushima. NEA News, 29(1), 6.
Olsen, G. T., Lee, W. J., & Blasingame, T. (2011). Reserves overbooking: the problem we’re finally going to talk about. SPE Economics & Management, 3(02), 68-78.
Tateno, S., & Yokoyama, H. M. (2013). Public anxiety, trust, and the role of mediators in communicating risk of exposure to low dose radiation after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant explosion. JCOM, 12(2), 1-22.
Wobeser, G. A. (2013). Essentials of disease in wild animals. John Wiley & Sons
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