Having a Recall-Ready Supply Chain | Episode 41

We had many great conversations at the Food Safety Consortium a few weeks ago. We have probably around 20 interviews coming to the Don’t Eat Poop! Podcast soon.

And one of those conversations was with Roger Hancock , CEO of Recall InfoLink , he's a good friend of ours.

?? Spoiler: that's next week's episode of Don't Eat POOP! A Food Safety Podcast

He was talking about having a recall-ready supply chain, a recall-ready industry. And we went deeper there in this week’s podcast episode. You can hit play below and follow along as you read the newsletter.?

In this episode:

• [06:15] A personal development caused by the dog food outbreak
• [12:56] An outbreak of Listeria and E. coli – and the problem with our current recall process and crisis management
• [22:27] Contaminated dog food: What you can do to make sure that there is no cross-contamination
• [24:52] Body fluid all over the school campus – and we're not just talking about pee or poop

The Problem with The Outbreak in Formula

Processes are great. We can all agree there.?

You need to have those processes in place, but if you're not putting them into practice, you’ll struggle to pull the product off the shelf.

The FDA had this issue and we talked to our friend Frank about it.

With the outbreak of infant formula, it was in somebody's email in the FDA for four or five months before he got it and was able to do anything with it.

How many kids could have been saved if that email hadn’t gotten lost in an inbox?

That happened. It's an industry pandemic.?

“Recalls are so few and far between that they're not being practiced. And when they do need to happen instantly in an emergency, they're not happening quickly.” – Matthew Regusci, episode 41 of Don’t Eat Poop!

How We Should Do Crisis Management

Now, major retailers are doing 200 recalls a year. They have the processes down, but the smaller retailers and some of these online ones aren't having them as frequently –? they're not practicing it.

Then people get sick and people die because they're just not practicing them.

?? This is serious ??

“The time to create a crisis management plan isn't in the middle of a crisis. It's before the crisis.” – Francine L Shaw, episode 41 of Don’t Eat Poop!

Another Important Note:

If you have a crisis management plan, your dry run shouldn't be in the middle of a crisis.

Matt and I have both seen this. There are a lot of crisis management plans that were written on a Word doc, put into a binder, and stuck on a shelf.?

Then, in the middle of a crisis, people don't even know where to find the damn binder. Let alone what's in it!

That’s when you find yourself in the middle of a crisis flipping through pages trying to find the next steps.

??♀? No, your crisis management plan needs to be practiced.?

It needs to be practiced regularly and updated regularly. Because titles change, positions change, and people change.?

It's funny sometimes, Matt and I are consultants, and some people look at us as like Chicken Little. They say, “Oh my gosh, you're always telling us the sky is falling.”

But guess what? When the sky is actually falling, they say, “Oh my gosh, come here, we need help.”

Please don’t wait for the sky to fall.?

Please don’t wait until you’ve eaten poop ??????

We'd love to hear from you!

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