PLANNING FOR WORST CASE SCENARIO IS IMPERATIVE. Does your company have a food safety recall plan? Is it up to date with regulatory requirements, and more importantly, customer expectations?
Food Recall Prep Plan
PLANNING FOR WORST CASE SCENARIO IS IMPERATIVE. Does your company have a food safety recall plan? Is it up to date with regulatory requirements, and more importantly, customer expectations?
Perhaps not.
Perhaps you are thinking that the chances of contamination in your product line are so remote, you can simply deal with it when a recall happens.
Food companies’ primary business goal is to distribute safe, wholesome products that comply with appropriate regulatory requirements while meeting consumer expectations. However, if a firm’s product is determined to be defective, unsafe, or in violation of federal or state laws, then their recall procedures will be used to remove product promptly and effectively from the marketplace in order to protect consumers.
Worst Case Scenario.
What is a Class I Recall?
A Class 1 Recall by definition is one that threatens public health and a risk of death — can be a business-altering event for a company unprepared to manage the situation effectively. In our experience, companies with a recall plan in place are those that care about customers, pay attention to their image and reputation and, not surprisingly, want to build their brands and drive sales.
Even with all the obvious benefits of recall pre-planning, we’ve seen businesses that act as if their executive offices had been hit by lightning. They don’t know what to do, and neither does the rest of the organization. Chaos ensues. The resulting drop in sales for the recalled item(s), to say nothing of the hit to a firm’s reputation, can end up costing millions. Worse, in the era of social media, a single recall event, if handled poorly, can linger online for months, if not years, making reputation recovery a long, drawn-out challenge.
Preparing a Food Recall Plan
In recent years we have had the opportunity to review over 200 food company recall plans and have classified the majority of the plans as lacking in key elements needed for an effective product recall implementation to be completed. Effective product recalls have five key steps that must be done in chronological sequence for the recall to be effective. Only about 10% of the recall plans reviewed could achieve the results of an effective recall for the food company and meet both customer expectations and those of the regulatory agency.
What is your Company’s Responsibility with a Product Recall?
It is the responsibility of each food company to have the knowledge and expertise to manage a product recall. Too many recall plans depend upon a regulatory agency to manage the firm’s recall plan. The key managers responsible for handling a product recall need to be knowledgeable as to:
- How to contact customers they shipped recalled product to
- How to identify the product in question
- How to contact the appropriate regulatory agency
- What information the regulatory agency will request
- The importance of promptness when producing records regarding the product recall
A company product recall implementation is a team effort, and each member needs to know their function and what records are required to make a decision in determining the extent of the product(s) to recall. Each team member needs to know their responsibility backward and forward and that comes from practice. The recall plan should identify who has the authority in the company to implement a product recall.
What Food Recall Services do we offer?
We welcome the opportunity to review your recall plan to determine its effectiveness and to offer comments on where it could be enhanced. We can augment your plan’s:
