By: Rob Ralyea, Senior Extension Associate, Cornell Dairy Foods Extension
For those of you enjoying the holidays and not paying particular attention, there have been a few recalls over the past several days that I’d like to highlight. Not because of the recall itself, but more so that you as a food manufacturer, can see how another company can damage your business.
For example this small ice cream company, Seattle-based Full Tilt Ice Cream, is recalling ice cream they manufactured from ingredients that they purchased from another company- specifically the ice cream base.
Yikes! It doesn’t stop there. Pink’s Ice Cream Company LLC is doing the same thing for the same reason.
It gets more disastrous…….the original supplier of the ice cream base, Snowqualmie Ice Cream has initiated a recall of their own which includes the dates between January 1 – December 21, 2014.
I highlight these recalls because as a food processor ingredients that are purchased from another source, could be subject to a recall affecting you because of another company’s negligence. I use these examples, but could use any of a number of other incidents of which probably one of the most infamous was the Peanut Corporation of America. The point is these recalls can be minimized, or at least the effect of these recalls on your business can be minimized if you keep detailed and accurate records. I would surmise that these subsidiary companies (Pinks and Full Tilt) were buying the base and making ice cream. Consider however, had they been buying base from another company, but their record keeping did not allow them to identify which base went into which batch. Therein lies a full recall since the ingredient cannot be identified, then it is assumed that it ALL is contaminated. This is why I emphasize the keeping of meticulous ingredient records. Due to no fault of your own, you someday might find yourself in this situation and minimizing a recall can be the difference between staying in, or going out of business. Stop for just a minute and imagine your company recalling 1 years’ worth of product and having to reimburse each customer.
On to the next issue: good records help you define what the recall should be. Bad press is never a good thing. Bad press twice is even worse. No one wants to make a dangerous product or cause anybody to get sick from food that they made. Recently a cheese company issued a recall due to possible contamination from Listeria Monocytogenes.
Note that the recall was for a few of its sheep milk and cow’s milk cheese produced in late May, late June and early July of 2014, based on sampling by the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) that found the presence of Listeria monocytogenes in at least one sample of three different cheeses.
Fast forward now to December 30th where they now are expanding its voluntary recall notice of December 17, 2014 to cover all of its sheep milk, goat milk, water buffalo milk and cow’s milk cheese produced between February 14, 2014 and September 19, 2014 due to an abundance of caution concerning the possibility of Listeria monocytogenes being present in some cheese. So now, instead of 3 types of cheese, this recall expands it to nine and includes 5 more months.
The goal of good record keeping is to try to minimize a recall. Obviously the more comprehensive and widespread a recall is, the more costly it is for a company, but conversely, the more drawn out and visible it is, it becomes even more costly in public trust and perception. This means that a more comprehensive, one-time recall in the long run is probably more cost effective than the continuous issuance of recall notices. Each single instance of bad press negates many, many instances of good press a company may have. Being honest, up front and forthcoming with information is an attribute consumers look for when things like this happen. Having a designated spokesperson that is trained and prepared to deal with the media and that is the face of the company also is most helpful.
As the title alludes, be honest with yourself about your record keeping. If I came to audit your plant and indicated that I found a supplier of yours that had a product contamination issue with a particular lot (or a few lots) of an ingredient that you purchase, could you justifiably minimize your recall? Are you doing mock recall exercises using like scenarios? What if I said I found a Listeria monocytogenes positive food contact surface from environmental testing…..could you identify which foods are processed on that equipment? Could you minimize the list? These are all questions as a food processor that you should be asking. Recalls are something that you should actually practice (mock exercises). If you can minimize your recall and justify your decision based on quality record keeping, then you are doing what you need to do to safeguard the financial well-being of your company as well as the public’s trust in your company.
