Food Recalls

Consumer brands gain confidence and trust from consumers with the delivery of safe, correctly labelled and good quality food products. Food processors constantly thrive to ensure that food safety and quality is maintained through all the phases of processing which initiates from responsible sourcing, handling and storage of raw materials, processing of the food and ends until the food product is delivered to the consumer and is safe for consumption as well as storage under the recommended conditions.

- Ms Ria Bhadra

Owing to the perishable nature of foods, it becomes very difficult to assure that under no circumstances should the food be exposed to conditions or environment which can contaminate the food. Hence, food safety does reside in the interface of risk management as well as supply chain management of any food processing firm. As discussed, food products are delicate and have high risks of contamination and the contaminated foods could pose different levels of severities of cases which could result to huge losses for the food producers. In such cases, depending upon the severity, food manufacturers take an action to remove the food product from all levels of distribution, sale and consumption as early as possible. This is known as a food product recall process.

There could be various reasons of a food product recall. Few of them could be related to microbial/chemical contamination, an undeclared allergen, foreign matter contamination, inappropriate labelling, misleading claims on the product etc. A recall could be either requested from a food processor on discovering such a defect or it could be initiated by the regulatory agencies based on consumer complaints. Irrespective of how profoundly the food has been distributed through the distribution network, the food product must be completely removed from the entire system.

In order to counter such uncertain recall issues effectively, it is highly important that food businesses establish a proper food recall system. Based on the extent of distribution, there are broadly two levels of recall: trade level recall and a consumer level recall

Trade level recall is when the product has not been distributed at consumer level or is not available to the public for purchase, such as the caterers or wholesalers. A consumer level recall is when the food is intended for a retail sale.