March 1, 2007
Will Changes Make Recalls More Effective?
Up till now, when a problem was discovered with meat and poultry that required a product recall, consumers have had the item identified by name, type of package and even the area of the country in which it was sold.
While the system has been successfully implemented in numerous cases over the years, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) is looking to provide consumers with more specific information during recall situations. The unintended consequences, however, may be that consumers are no safer than before while retailers suffer business losses.
The USDA has proposed posting the names and store locations of retailers involved in recalls on its website for public disclosure. The agency maintains that the added information is necessary because of the amount of confusion inherent in the current system. If consumers are aware a product is being recalled from a specific retailer, they are thought to be more likely to check their refrigerators for recalled items.
According to a report on the USA Today website, Richard Raymond, food-safety chief at the USDA, has said, “We need consumers to have this vital information to help protect themselves.”
The American Meat Institute (AMI) and the Food Marketing Institute (FMI), are among those lobbying the government to not go forward with the changes. They and other government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) consider the dealings between processor/manufacturers and retailers a private matter. Opponents to the proposed rules argue that the detail can put some parties at a competitive disadvantage by making confidential information public.
Mark Dopp, general counsel for AMI, said, “I don’t know too many companies that would gladly hand over their customer lists for their competitors to see.”
FMI’s position is the current system works by encouraging consumers “to do the single-most-important thing … to protect themselves: check their refrigerators and freezers.”
Discussion Questions: Will consumers be safer as a result of the changes in recall notification proposed by the USDA? What will it mean for retailers as well as meat and poultry processors?
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Perhaps a reasonable compromise could be reached between the government and the FMI and AMI. Companies could have this choice: post their info on the FDA web site OR if someone gets sick from their product the corporate officers could be held personally responsible. Wouldn’t that be fair?
I believe this time the government has it right. Consumers who are worried that the recalled product may be sitting in their pantry will be able to have a place to go to confirm or assuage their fear. The present system feeds food anxiety and also causes a halo effect around the type of product being recalled.
The fact is, the food supply chain strives to avoid the need to have a recall, but recalls happen. If a product recall is necessary, doesn’t it make sense to post this information in the most complete fashion to support consumer safety?
The FDA’s premise is wrong: that posting locations on their site will make the public safer. In a populace where 50% of heart-attack victims don’t take the life-saving medicine gathering dust in their medicine chest, do we really think consumers will take time to check the FDA’s website?
Further, the recall targets the least precise step in the chain—distribution, rather than the most precise: production and consumption. Technology exists which can significantly improve the detection of contamination at the meat packing plant. Similarly, at least two companies have technology which would indicate to consumers that a specific package of meat is contaminated/spoiled.
The entire industry would be well served to voluntarily adopt those precise solutions rather than suffer from broadly damaging, poorly-constructed government interventions.
For once I agree with the USDA. I can’t tell you how exhausting it is to keep seeing food manufacturers and processors automatically resist any suggestion that reeks of transparency. Oh woe is us, we make so little money doing the right thing that we really can’t afford to tell consumers what they’re buying or where it comes from or how it’s made. Just trust us. We wouldn’t be in business if we were poisoning people.
The most important part of this story, to me, was the explanation of the fairly obvious point that retailers buy in bulk then re-package in portion sizes that their customers will want to buy. How, then, does the customer know anything about where the product came from? Give it up, guys, own up and tell us all about who you are and what you do. Or are you afraid that we might become more afraid? You might be pleasantly surprised. There might be less fear if there was more honesty; if you have nothing to hide….
I don’t believe recalling a potentially bad product will hurt retailers. We are in the information age. People will respond to the information and have a right to protect their health and the health of their families. Some will choose not to, as every day we hear about possible health hazards, but people still buy sugar, drink sodas…on and on. Media noise about the recall is much better publicity than a death being tracked back to a product purchased at your store.
With technology that already exists today, manufacturers can track lot code to a specific area and could track it all the way down to a specific store. It’s just gathering data. It is with such technology that Con Agra was able to hone in on lot code 2111. They recalled the entire lot. But if, with already existing technology, they reduced production by smaller lots and captured check digits for each region, state, city, store order, they could very well narrow the recall to just where the problem exists. Thereby, the media and notifications would be limited to a specific area. But of course the smaller the lot size the more time, labor and detail the associates go through and time is money.
By the way, this can be done with bar codes and does not have to be done with RFID. If the stores were to install POS systems that gathered such data, we could know who purchased every jar.
Consumers will only feel safe when the number of food recalls decline. We’ve seen way too many of them recently and it is only serving to hurt the consumers’ perception of the food supply chain and the safety element which everyone has taken for granted. Regulations in and of themselves are meaningless in terms of minimizing media exposure.
Compounding this issue is the complexity of the food supply chain and the large number of pre-assembled items which are made up of products from multiple food groups. No level of government regulation will change the perception held by the consumer, this will only change when the number of food recalls decline.
I think it is unlikely that a whole lot of consumers will be running to the USDA web site to check on list of stores. Some will, I’m sure, but I can’t imagine a lot.
I was hoping the “changes” that were being proposed here were relative to detailed tracking and visibility to product throughout the supply chain, similar to pharmaceuticals. We have enormous opportunity from technologies available today to dramatically improve the traceability of food products from farmers to manufacturers to distribution, that would enable much more rapid–and cost effective–response to problems.
There will always be issues; we need visibility and control in a way that both protects consumers and minimizes the impact on retailers and manufacturers. There is technology that can do it today, but just like the use of bar codes in hospitals, which have clearly been shown to reduce the significant number of deaths and injuries from dispensing the wrong drugs to patients, not much happens.