We consider the ripple effect in the food supply chain and recovery policies on the example of Australia. Ripple effect describes the impact of a disruption on supply chain economic performance and disruption-based scope of changes needed in the supply structures and parameters to preserve the resilience. First, we describe the ripple effect in general and one example of the ripple effect in the food supply chain in Australia. Second, we present two models for a proactive and a reactive approach to the recovery policies in the food supply chain under conditions of the ripple effect. The preliminary results of this study can be used in future for comparing proactive and reactive approaches to tackling the ripple effect from resilience and flexibility views.