The importance of a tested recall procedure

(and the fact that you might have a hidden budget for pre-crisis management activities) 

I have a customer where the quality manager is new and she’s the first quality manager in this small company. 

Little before she was there, the company owner was informed by one of his suppliers that sesame seed supplied to him had to be recalled. One week after that, the new quality manager starts and she is asked to complete a template that was made by another consultant, to make sure everything was documented.

Yesterday morning, the second day of my assignment, we were working on an email to send out to suppliers to collect necessary information. We stay away from sending a questionnaire that nobody wants to complete, for sure not for a very small customer, and only collect the information that is adding value to my customer to do the supplier risk assessment and to carry out their own food safety risk assessment.

Why is this one of the first things we do? As it will take time to collect that information and we need it to carry out a valuable risk assessment ourselves. 

There is a knock on the door and the owner of the company comes in: he had a call from the authorities that they are violating the regulations by not reporting the recall to them and he gives me the mobile phone number of the person who called him: “What should we do?”.

Needless to say, that we drop the work we are doing and focus on handling this challenge. We take the completed traceability exercise template: luckily the one customer that received the recalled sesame seeds was already informed about the recall, with the question to block everything and to send back the sesame seeds.

We visit the webpage of the authorities on recall: every country has its own rules and systems and as my customer is in a different country than where I’m from, I need to make sure what the right procedure is to inform the authorities about a recall. 

Next thing: let’s give this guy a call and see if we can reduce the damage.

We explain our situation that a quality manager started after the recall was initiated (“I’m glad you’re on board now!”), that our customer that received the goods was informed immediately after receiving the info from the supplier, but that informing the authorities was something that didn’t happen at that time: if we still could do it now to avoid issues.

Glad we made that phone call: from today onwards, there would be a penalty fee of € 10k/day for not reporting it. They need that info to make the mass balance of the issue and he also informs us that more issues with sesame seeds where on the way.

We completed the online form with all relevant information, including emails to the customer and informed the inspector that we completed the form.

We still have to formalise the recall procedure, but now my customer knows what to do in case of a recall and how to react to the authorities: it’s better to stay on good terms with them! And one of the items that will be included in the procedure is to test the recall procedure on an annual basis. We have some blogs on recall and mass balance exercises with more valuable information on what to include more.

It’s 16:30… a knock on the door again… it’s the owner of the company: “I just received an email from a supplier that there is an issue with the sesame seeds they supplied to us”. I feel confident that the new quality manager knows what to do now. (I’ve just caught up with her on the phone, and everything is under control)

 Did you know you might have a hidden budget for pre-crisis management activities, that can include the review of your risk assessment, writing a recall procedure and so much more? As a consultant for WorldAware, I can tell you where you might find it and it’s not only for food companies!

As I can imagine that many of you would like to know where they might find that hidden budget, I have automated the response process: follow the link below, complete the form and you will immediately receive an email that explains to you where you might find your hidden budget.