Swiss stockpiling policy calms panic buyers

WHILE pasta, eggs and toilet paper have flown off shelves around the world thanks to panic buying, one country has kept up an Olympian calm.

Switzerland has more than four months of food stocks and other provisions due to a well-honed system making it a constitutional duty to maintain one of the world’s largest stockpiles.

As of last year, it had almost 400,000 tons of specialist feed for its dairy industry, 63,000 tons of sugar, 160,000 tons of white flour for bread and 33,700 tons of cooking oil in reserve.

“There is no reason to panic over food,” Werner Meier, the government’s delegate for national economic supply, told compatriots as the epidemic started to accelerate in Italy.

A small country dependent on imports, Switzerland has taken measures since the Middle Ages to ensure the supply of vital foodstuffs and since 1955 it has obliged the private sector, not central authorities, to store emergency stocks of essential products. For example, an importer of petrol is required by law to store some of the fuel for emergency use. In return, Switzerland finances the storage costs of companies through a reserve fund managed by the Reservesuisse organisation, at a cost of 14 Swiss (£11.68) per inhabitant per year.

Staple foods such as sugar, and cereals, energy sources (petrol and fuel oil) and medicines (antibiotics and vaccines) must cover normal needs in the event of a crisis for three to six months.

A plan to stop stockpiling coffee as an “unessential” item sparked such an outcry last November that reserves were maintained and now surpass 15,000 tons. Households are advised to keep nine litres of bottled water per person, enough food to feed someone for a week, a gas stove, candles, toilet paper and cash.

Switzerland has already released its 168,000-ton reserve of face masks.