In an EU country, the company received consumer complaints about canned meat products, produced in-house in the same country. Cans were bulging. At that point, there were two possibilities: underprocessing or leaking cans. In either case, there would be microbial contamination and growth. The company decided to issue a public recall immediately and subsequently informed the local authorities. Further, further production was halted, and an investigation into the incident was initiated.
The local authorities were very critical of the recall, demanding to know what exactly was the nature of the microbial contamination. They argued that this situation was not likely a danger to public health and warned the company not to issue any public recalls on their own initiative ever again but to inform them first and wait for instructions.