Singapore School Preparedness: A Day Without Eggs or Milk

My son studies at a local school, and in February 2025 I received an announcement: on February 17, as part of Total Defence Day and Exercise SG Ready 2025, students would experience a food disruption simulation.

The wider national exercise involved more than 800 organisations and many kinds of preparedness activity. The official factsheet says schools could simulate food or water disruptions resulting from a prolonged power outage. The eggs-and-dairy menu was our school’s version of it.

Reading “food disruption simulation”, I immediately imagined ration books, emergency supplies and a survival menu. Then I reached the practical detail: for one day, the school canteen would not serve eggs or dairy.

My imagination had prepared a much larger production.

Singapore depends heavily on food imports. Disruptions due to climate change, geopolitical tensions and trade restrictions are a real concern. This school exercise brought that distant-sounding problem down to something children could recognise: their usual breakfast might not be available.

Parents were encouraged to discuss it with their children. A day without eggs or dairy could not reproduce a prolonged disruption, but it gave families somewhere concrete to start the conversation.

My original school announcement concerned eggs and dairy. I had been picturing emergency rations; the exercise got as far as breakfast.