Coping strategies - IFI FebMar 10

Given the number of potential issues that could compromise the safety of food products and ingredients, the modern industry has an impressive quality record. Nonetheless, in any given week, products are being recalled for a variety of reasons indicating that contamination remains a serious issue, and when an incident strikes, food producers have to react swiftly and appropriately.

In fact, at contract laboratory Reading Scientific Services Ltd (RSSL), much of the analytical work is directed towards incident prevention, simply by offering manufacturers the assurance that incoming ingredients and outgoing products meet their specifications, and are free of contamination.

Producers may wish to exclude perfectly legal entities, such as artificial colours that must nonetheless be excluded from products that claim to be 100% natural, or ingredients that can't be used in an allergen-free product. Other customers are looking to exclude illegal and hazardous contaminants, such as melamine and Sudan Red, both of which have prompted some of the biggest food incidents of recent years.

Of course, routine analysis is only likely to highlight predictable problems. It is the unpredictable events that usually lead to crisis, and this is where emergency response services come into play. These can provide the urgent analytical support necessary to give senior management the information they need to decide how to respond when their product has been compromised.

This might be in response to an individual customer complaint, an out-of-specification result from routine testing, or mere suspicion that all is not what it seems with a supply of ingredients. Good information will ensure that the potentially harmful impact of the 'incident' is kept to an absolute minimum, that the right steps are taken to protect consumers, and may also be vital in deciding issues of liability.

 

 

All manufacturers are vulnerable to the 'obvious' contamination that might arise from naturally occurring chemicals, persistent organic pollutants, allergenic proteins, pesticide or veterinary drug residues, microbial toxins, chemicals used in the factory, machinery, packaging and deliberate tamper. Others will be aware of specific vulnerabilities to issues that emerge from time to time, as in the recent case of melamine found in dairy ingredients derived from China, or the migration of Bisphenol A from plastic packaging. However, even with so many potential problems identified, there is still room for contaminants to occur which catch everyone unawares.

Chemical contaminants present a particular problem because they can cause significant product safety or quality issues even at extremely low concentrations. Detecting one rogue chemical at concentrations of less than 10 parts per million can be more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack. At least in the latter case, you know you're looking for a needle, and you only have hay to interfere with the search.

So any investigation requires a huge amount of expertise and analytical resource of a kind that only a specialist laboratory is likely to have. This is because the techniques required to quantify metal contamination in a boiled sweet (atomic absorption spectrometry) are very different from those used to detect peanut proteins in ice cream (enzyme linked immunsorbent assay), or a detergent taint in a tin of fruit (liquid chromatography mass spectrometry).

Similarly, the techniques used to identify a foreign body as glass (usually scanning electron microscopy linked to x-ray microanalysis) are different from those used to identify it as plastic (Fourier transform infra-red spectrometry). Moreover, the detection of a chemical taint such as trichloroanisole in bottled water (usually by gas chromatography mass spectrometry) represents a different challenge from detecting the same taint in something like yoghurt.

Each incident has its own challenges and the laboratory may have very little to work on when a problem first comes to light. First impressions can be deceptive, and customer complaints of “glass” often turn out to be something different, just as their descriptions of a bad taste and ill-effects are not always accurate.

The following case study gives some idea of the twists and turns that can be involved in any investigation, though some details have been withheld for reasons of client confidentiality.

A food manufacturer contacted RSSL when consumers complained of a weird smell on opening a packaged product. RSSL's chemists could also smell the taint on opening the product, but it could not be detected using even the most sensitive equipment. It was simply too volatile.

With no laboratory results to double-check, RSSL sent staff to the factory to sample products and ingredients at source. Everything was frozen before being taken to the laboratory.

Even so, the mass spectrometer still could not detect the taint directly, so the odour port of the gas chromatography equipment was used to narrow down the search.

In fact, the manufacturer was not using this chemical anywhere on site. Nor for that matter were any of the ingredient suppliers. RSSL's scientists were able to show that the taint was not only in the finished product but in the air samples from the factory.

Finally, after more site visits, the trail led to a nearby factory that had recently started using new solvents in its own processes. Further tests suggested that vented air from this source was probably entering the client's factory and spoiling its products!

In conclusion, there will always be unforeseen events, both accidental and intentional, that can result in products being contaminated. In these cases, immediate analytical support is required to gain a full understanding of the problem. Only then can decisions be taken about how to address the crisis in the short term, and thereafter to implement changes to procedures that might prevent any similar problem recurring.

 

www.rssl.com

Karen Masters is business development

manager at RSSL.

 

 

Of course, it is essential to manage all technical scientific elements of a food contamination, writes Andy Cuerel. But it is equally important to adopt robust communication protocols.

Furthermore, while consumer communication is paramount, it is by no means the sole area of consideration either before or during a reactive situation. The channels by which a manufacturer can learn of an adverse situation are numerous. The obvious one is consumer/customer feedback, but others may arise from within the production environment or other parts of the supply chain. This on the face of it is a better situation than the former, but only if those on the frontline are diligent in escalating issues in a timely manner.

Questions to ask when formulating your internal communications procedure would be: Are employees equipped with the knowledge and resources to aid early detection? Do they understand who they should be escalating issues to, and what are the triggers for doing so? Does the culture within the organisation facilitate this or is there is a tendency to hang on to things for too long, limiting subsequent options (such as product quarantine) which hours or days earlier might have been effective?

Other ways in which product contamination situations can manifest themselves are via: suppliers; retail/wholesale customers; police (think malicious contamination); public health agencies, and of course the media. The key consideration here is that these notifications will often enter the company through a variety of routes, from procurement teams and sales managers to marketing and the press office, in addition to technical personnel who may be responsible for making the first assessment prior to further escalation.

The food industry is littered with manufacturer case studies where internal communication has not occurred in a timely manner, exacerbating the severity of an issue at an early stage.

Communicating externally during a contamination incident can involve even more variables, but need not be problematic if simple disciplines are maintained. Questions to ask include: who is, or might be, affected (customers, consumers, regulators, media, company employees, and so on); what their concerns and issues are; and what they need or expect to hear from the company

The key emphases here are on timeliness and consistency of message, by anticipating stakeholder concerns quickly and decisively and ensuring the essence of all communications is the same, no matter who they are directed to.

A well-executed consumer recall by way of example, while potentially expensive operationally, will not necessarily cause any lasting harm to reputation if in implementing it the company was seen to be diligent and ethical in its actions.

 

www.ecmp.net

Andy Cuerel is senior consultant at Razor PR, part of the European Crisis Management Partnership (ECMP), grouping agencies in seven different countries.