A panel of experts from regulatory, state agriculture, and consumer advocacy groups shared their views on recall modernization and improvement at a Wednesday educational session at the 2022 Food Safety Summit.

The 2022 Food Safety Summit opened with a mock civil trial focusing on a fatal listeriosis outbreak. The workshop was led by attorneys from Food Industry Counsel LLC and included witness testimony, cross-examination, and a jury of conference attendees.

New Zealand Food Safety has released a detailed recall guidance that includes six steps to follow, as well as resources for food businesses.

A recent study found that food recalls may negatively affect brands that rely on e-commerce more than brick-and-mortar retailers, and that it may be harder to restore consumer confidence for online brands even when voluntarily restorative actions are taken.

The culture of a facility in food safety or customer relations is impacted by how customer communications are managed. Customer complaint trending and response are part of a company or facility's risk management strategy. The objective of any management system is to try to protect the company from adverse actions. Understanding and responding to customer complaints is one strategy.

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.

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.