What is the purpose of this document?
These USDA guidelines are designed to help meat and poultry establishments develop a written program to respond to customer complaints—particularly those caused by adulterated or misbranded meat and poultry products. Within the document are best practices for the meat and poultry industry to follow in response to customer complaints. It serves as reference material on best practices for responding to customer complaints of adulterated and misbranded meat and poultry products. FSIS developed this document in response to an increase in the number of recalls of meat and poultry products adulterated with foreign materials. In many cases, the recalling establishments had received multiple customer complaints prior to these recalls. FSIS specifically developed this document to address foreign material customer complaints, but establishments can apply the information to other customer complaints of adulterated or misbranded products in commerce. This guideline represents FSIS’s current thinking on this topic and should be considered usable as of the issuance date.