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Mid-Year Meeting

Global Sourcing and Food Product Recalls:
Coincidence or Connected?

Joint Meeting with the Washington DC Section

MARCH 14, 2008

These presentations are provided here as a courtesy by the speakers. Please contact them before using any of the information contained within the presentations.

About 50 members gathered for the annual mid-year symposium at the offices of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Ellis (KLG) in Washington, D.C. to hear 10 speakers address the timely issue, “Global Sourcing and Food Product Recalls: Coincidence or Connected?” KLG offered an excellent meeting facility with two video screens for optimized views of the speakers, a tasty hot lunch, and a networking reception. Dr. Art Miller of Exponent started the thinking process by observing that, “Recalls are counter to flow.” He continued noting that misbranding and adulteration used to be the reasons for recalls, but these days recalls may occur for undeclared allergens, Listeria monocytogenes, import issues, and other non-traditional reasons. Joe Baca, recently retired from FDA’s Office of Regulatory Affairs, put some statistics behind Miller’s comments and noted the Number One cause of recalls is incorrect packaging and labeling.

USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service is pressing for management of recalled product through a proposal to list all distributors of such product. Mark Dopp, from the American Meat Institute, held up a 126 page print out of the distributors of the recently recalled Hallmark ground meat to illustrate the difficulties of expecting Americans to sort through that lengthy list to find their supplying grocers. Food safety is a high risk according to Lisa Shames of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) which added food safety to its list of risks in January. GAO continues to monitor the connection between food safety and imports and will issue a report this summer targeting importing. Shames spoke further on her article published in the May 2007 Food Technology titled, “The Food Safety System Needs Restructuring” in which she admonished regulation of food in the U.S. for being under being under no less than 15 agencies. She urged that agencies governing food safety should have mandatory recall authority.

Dr. Robert Brackett with Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) was the lunch speaker. He spoke to food safety in the context that, “Industry needs to tout their performance in food safety to shore up consumer confidence.” Brackett urged that we the industry think globally, not just about ourselves. The goal is food safety, but to get there we must figure out how to harmonize practices like Good Agricultural Practices and Good Manufacturing Practices, how to audit, and the role of traceability. In contrast to Shames, Brackett said there are really only 3 primary agencies, not 15, that deal with food, and command and control of the industry by the agencies is an antiquated approach.

Dr. Craig Henry discussed GMA’s October 2007 conference on global sourcing, noting the soon to be published Food Supply Chain Handbook, the major outcome of that conference, and announced another more detailed conference on global sourcing to follow on July 9 and 10, 2008.

The remainder of the afternoon was devoted to a legislative update by Tony Pavel of K&L Gates who had plenty of material from the numerous bills on food safety as under current draft by Congress. Tony Flood of the International Food Information Council (IFIC) concluded with a primer on risk communication for leaders in public and corporate policy. He used examples from IFIC Foundation’s consumer research to discuss the role this information can play in external or public outreach. He also emphasized several key best practices to be considered when developing external communications.

As the information-packed day drew to a close, the answer to the question posed in the symposium title didn’t seem to be a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and that’s the end of the story. Recalls may indeed be connected to global sourcing, but the industry, working in concert with the agencies, can use its knowledge base to manage against recalls and harmonize food safety practices both here in the U.S. and internationally.

Meeting Program