– OPINION –
Imagine a phone call or an email landing in your inbox: “Sir, we have been contacted by health authorities and they say our product has been linked to illnesses and deaths. What do we do?” So, what do you do?
The CEO of Boar’s Head received that call. What has he done now and what will he do?
Having been involved in every major (and some minor) food poisoning outbreaks since the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak of 1993, I’ve seen it all.
I’ve seen good CEOs act badly and make their own and their company’s problems worse, and I’ve seen bad CEOs handle the outbreak with such aplomb that they became associated with both food safety and good PR.
So, what do you do?
Of course, it is always best to prevent the outbreak. When I’ve talked to CEOs or their boards—generally before the outbreak and before the lawsuit—I always pitch them on “why it’s a bad idea to poison your customers.”
Putting safe food as your primary goal – yes, unfortunately, even before profit – will (without a fail) give you a very, very good chance of never seeing me on the other side of a courtroom. But what if despite your best efforts, or what if you just don’t care, and an outbreak occurs.
So, what do you do?
First, make sure you have a pre-existing relationship with the people who regulate you. If someone is holding your company in the palm of his or her hand, you should at least do so on a first name basis.
No, I’m not suggesting that you can influence your way out of the outbreak, but knowing who is telling you that your company has a problem can help you get the facts and understand them.
Do regulators and their researchers make mistakes? Maybe, but not very often and not often enough to waste time arguing that your company hasn’t poisoned customers.
Second, stop production of the affected product and immediately initiate a recall for all products at risk.
This procedure should have been practiced, practiced, practiced before. All potentially affected suppliers should be alerted and all retailers assisted. Consumers must also be involved.
The goal now is to remove poisoned products from the market and certainly from consumers’ homes.
Third, start your own research with two approaches, and at the same time. Are the regulators right? And what went wrong? Tell everyone to save all documents and electronic data. The goal here is to get things right.
If it really isn’t your product, what happened is bad, but survivable. If it really was your product, knowing what happened can ensure that it will likely never happen again. Above all, be transparent. Tell everyone what you think is good or bad.
Fourth, assuming the outbreak is actually your fault, admit it publicly. If it’s not your fault, fight it. However, pretending to be innocent when you are guilty will get you nowhere.
Asking for forgiveness is not a bad thing if you have something you need to be forgiven for. Saying you’re sorry isn’t wrong when you’re actually wrong.
Fifth, don’t blame your customers. If your food contains a pathogen, it is not your customer’s responsibility to handle it as if it is likely to kill him or a member of his family.
Hoping that the consumer will correct your mistake does not require you to avoid the mistake in the first place.
Sixth, reach out to your customers and consumers who have been harmed. Offering to pay legitimate losses will save you money and your company’s reputation in the long run. The public will give you credit, and it will be a reduction in future awards at trial.
Seventh, learn everything you have learned. Don’t hide what you’ve learned. Make your knowledge freely available so that we can all reduce the risk of something similar happening again.
Yes, you can do all of the above and still file a lawsuit. And I might be the one to sue you.
Yet companies that have followed the above are finding that passage through outbreak, recall and lawsuits is temporary. The companies that struggle for unfounded reasons will rarely survive in the long run, or they will simply pay my clients more money.
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