We consider time critical supply chains in the Australia dairy industry and recovery policies in the presence of the ripple effect. Ripple effect is 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 dairy supply chain in Australia. Second, we present a model for reactive recovery policies in the dairy supply chain under conditions of the ripple effect and exemplify them on a simulation example. The 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.