Mock Recalls: What Are They, Why Are They Important, And How Do I Perform One? (Part Two Of Three)

By Sam Lewis, editor, Food Online and Jennifer McEntire, Ph.D., VP of science operations at GMA

View the entire web chat or check out part one of this series

In part one of Mock Recalls: What Are They, Why Are They Important, And How Do I Perform One? Jennifer McEntire, Ph.D., VP of science operations at GMA, presented on the mock recalls and best practices for performing them. Here, in part two of the series, McEntire begins answering questions from the web chat’s live audience.

Sam: Yuri is asking, “Is there a resource to obtain templates for mock recall reports?”

Dr. McEntire: There are an awful lot of recall-related resources available, including templates. I’m a big fan of templates because even though you can’t exactly anticipate what’s going to happen to details, the templates are still incredibly useful as a starting point whether it’s a mock recall or if you find yourself in the position of an actual recall.

The USDA, FSIS, and the FDA have a lot of information and a lot of guidance available around recalls. I would highly recommend that people find them. Maybe we’ll put a little article together for the future that identifies some of these resources. The FSIS ones, their templates, obviously, are for the meat and poultry and processed egg industries, but they’re readily adaptable to the breadth of the food industry. The FDA also has some of their template communications, what’s expected to be in a press release, for example.

GMA also has a guidance document that we’ve put together that has a number of these types of templates. So, these are things you would use during an actual recall or during a mock recall. In terms of documenting what happened in a recall, that’s something that should be developed as the situation evolves, so as each action is taken, having that documentation.