Mitigate Your Food Recall Risk through Advance Training

By Steve Hather

Food safety is clearly top of mind for consumers in most countries, spurred on as it is by a series of product recalls, many of which have not been managed well.

The challenge for many food businesses is that social media has changed the landscape when it comes to food safety incidents. News of an incident escalates faster and to a much broader audience today than ever before. Armchair journalists are more than happy to speculate on what happened, and this serves to fuel the discussion. The “real” journalists pick up the story. Before they know it, company executives are embroiled in a brand crisis prior to even having had a chance to respond.

When a senior executive team is sitting around a table quietly having a coffee talking about how the company would respond if an incident occurs, it can all seem quite intuitive. You have good traceability, you know how you will get the product back.