Recall/Crisis Management

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The Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO) recently released a whitepaper that provides recommendations for recall modernization to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other stakeholders, based on three years of data collection and analysis.

Breaking Bad News author Jeff Hahn sits down with Food Safety Matters to share insights and tools for successfully navigating crisis communications. Also, Bob Ferguson of Strategic Consulting joins us to discuss his latest Food Safety Insights column, “How WGS Continues to Change Food Safety."

Food Safety Matters speaks to attorney Shawn Stevens, Founder, and Partner at Food Industry Counsel LLC, about the firm's Food Recall Reporter search tool and how the data can be used for predictive analysis. Mr. Stevens also speaks about upcoming changes to FDA’s enforcement policies.

Class 1 recalls are defined as situations where there is a reasonable probability that the use of or exposure to a food product will cause serious adverse health consequences or death to humans. Residues of most of the so-called "Big 8" (and soon-to-be "Big 9," with the recent addition of sesame seeds) allergenic foods are considered as a basis for Class 1 recalls. While food allergen recalls are unwelcome, potentially valuable lessons can be learned from these unfortunate events. Good manufacturing practices (GMPs) have evolved from corrective actions taken to prevent allergen recalls.

This column will expand on the findings of the FDA study of the economic evaluation of the GenomeTrakr whole genome sequencing (WGS) program, adding data on the use of sequencing and how it will continue to change food safety practices and markets. It will also discuss what FDA is doing with GenomeTrackr to uncover previously unseen outbreaks and how this is keeping pressure on processors to expand environmental monitoring and controls.

When regulatory stakeholders effectively collaborate at the local, state, and federal levels and understand each other’s roles, resources, and authorities, food recalls can be processed more efficiently. This results in a more agile recall response down to the consumer level, benefitting everyone in the farm-to-fork continuum and potentially reducing additional exposures and illnesses.

Food safety stories are essential to communicate lessons learned and share the practical experiences of food safety professionals to enhance the effectiveness of food safety training.