Vetter Consulting Solutions can design a Recall Plan tailored to for your specific products. If your business has been implicated in an outbreak investigation or recall, Dr. Vetter has years of experience leading and implementing the USDA/FSIS recall process and aiding in federal outbreak investigations.
Being involved in a recall is stressful. Often large amounts of information have to be obtained very quickly in order to determine if adulterated or misbranded products were shipped into commerce and if so, what risk does that pose to the public.
- Tracing back the source of all materials used to make the product(s).
- Tracing forward the shipment of the products forward to the point of sale.
- Microbial sampling results from products and/or case patients (people that became ill).
- Subject matter expert analyses of the public health risk.
- Production records in order to help determine scope (this could weeks, to months, and sometimes years for shelf-stable or frozen product).
- Undeclared Allergens (e.g. milk was used in the formulation of a product but not declared on the final product label)
- Products positive for adulterants (e.g. STECs in raw non-intact beef products, Listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat (RTE) deli products)
- Foreign Materials (e.g. pieces of plastic in frozen chicken nuggets)
- Misbranding (e.g. MSG was used in the formulation of the product but not declared on the final product label)
- Outbreak or Illness (e.g. Salmonella Newport in ground beef makes several people in multiple states ill)
Any recall situation is a stressful situation. Very important decisions have to made very quickly. One of the worst types of recalls to be involved in as a food producer is an outbreak related recall. This means the food made by your business has been implicated in a foodborne illness. People got sick.
Outbreak investigations often require implicated food producers to provide records tracing the production and distribution of their products. Outbreak investigations also incorporate any available epidemiological information received from ill customers. This information can be complex and difficult to interpret, but it is often used to determine the scope or how big the recall will be. Beginning able to narrow down the scope of recall can mean the difference between recalling just a few thousand pounds of product to millions of pounds of product.
Being involved in recall is something every company hopes to avoid and why companies invest enormous resources to ensure the safety of their products. But if it does happen, preparedness is the key to ensure a quick and effective recall process is initiated so your company can move past the recall and forward with producing a safe product for consumers.
