Food and drink recalls - why do they happen?

Sam Miles Date published: Jul 02, 24

Food and drink recalls are a complex, often serious issue that every food and drink manufacturer around the world wants to avoid. But, to be able to take the right actions to minimize product recalls, organizations must have a strong understanding of why they’re often necessary and what causes them.

Quality managers and their teams have a crucial role to play in preventing and mitigating recalls. Serious quality issues can result in a range of severe consequences for consumers, manufacturers and other supply chain stakeholders. At best, if a product is withdrawn before it reaches the consumer, poor quality can lead to financial losses through wastage and the additional costs incurred to resolve the issue.

However, in cases where the issue isn’t identified until the compromised product has already gone on sale, meaning the product has to be recalled from consumers, the consequences can be far more serious. In extreme cases, quality issues can result in sickness or even fatality, as well as significant reputational damage, further increased costs and wastage and possible litigation.

It's therefore essential for quality professionals in the food and beverage industry to ensure standards are consistently being met before products leave the factory, with meticulous quality procedures and inspections to ensure quality.

We discuss the key reasons food and beverage products are often recalled from customers and the most common causes for quality managers to be aware of.

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Reasons for product recalls

The specific reasons product are recalled can vary significantly from one manufacturer to another, depending on what’s being produced, the standards expected by consumers and the regulatory requirements that must be adhered to.

However, generally, quality issues will fit into one of three categories:

Contamination: food and drink products can be exposed to a wide range of contaminants, including microbial (such as bacteria, viruses or parasites), chemical (toxic substances such as pesticides or cleaning agents), physical (foreign objects such as glass, metal, plastic or pests), or allergens. All of these contaminants pose a significant safety risk to consumers, with the potential to cause sickness or fatality if not recalled in time.

Mislabelling: errors on a product’s label can vary in severity. In more serious cases, ingredients and allergens can be missed, putting consumers at risk of allergic reactions. In fact, missing or incorrect allergen information is the number one cause of recalls, with contamination and allergens accounting for more than 90% of recalls in the UK in 2023.

Missed standards: some quality control issues don’t pose a safety risk to consumers, but result in a substandard product that falls short of consumer expectations. Variations in taste, texture, appearance or quantity, while not dangerous to consumers, run the risk of returns, lost future sales and customer complaints.

Why these issues occur

These quality issues can arise, and go undetected, for a variety of reasons. It’s not as simple as stating that, for example, plastic contamination is always caused by broken machinery. As a result, as soon as an issue is identified, it’s crucial for the manufacturer to immediately launch an investigation to identify the specific root cause – enabling them to take swift action to stop the problem and prevent it from recurring.

Some of the most common causes of quality issues that result in recalls include:

Failure to follow procedures: Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are put in place to boost process efficiency, quality control and product uniformity. When these best practices aren’t adhered to, production deficiencies can lead to products being mislabelled, sanitation being compromised and several other concerns.

Inadequate inspections: along with production errors, deficiencies in monitoring are one of the biggest reason products are recalled. Inspections being too irregular, not thorough enough or conducted by staff without adequate training can lead to issues being missed and products released for sale with significant defects.

Poor sanitation: when tools, equipment and uniforms aren’t cleaned sufficiently, cross-contamination can cause pathogens or allergens to be transferred between products. Chemicals, microorganisms, allergens and other foreign substances can be unintentionally transferred from people, food and objects.

Supplier issues: contaminants such as pathogens can also originate from a manufacturer’s supply chain, particularly when procuring raw agricultural goods like meat and dairy. As a result, supplier screening is crucial to reduce the risk of salmonella, listeria and e. coli, as well as other contaminants.

Inadequate training: when employees at any stage in production lack sufficient training, errors become more likely. This can be particularly problematic in the context of a global manufacturing skills shortage, with poor training potentially leading to contamination, mislabelling and poor quality.

Human error: workers can make mistakes for several reasons, not just because they haven’t been trained properly. Errors can be particularly prevalent if employees are burnt out, working long hours or with inadequate support – issues which can be increasingly common during a skills shortage as workforces struggle to cope with reduced headcounts.

Broken machinery: faulty equipment can cause various issues, particularly if the fault isn’t immediately identified. Not only can machinery breakdowns result in products falling short of expected standards, but in some cases it can cause physical contamination, with pieces of glass, metal or other materials entering the product.

With such a wide range of risks threatening the integrity of food and drink products, quality managers have their work cut out for them in preventing and mitigating the damage of food and drink recalls. But with all of these issues having the potential to cause serious harm to consumers, as well as the organization, ensuring continuous high quality and minimizing product recalls is crucial.

Effective, comprehensive quality management is therefore essential to not just the success of the organization, but also the safety and wellbeing of its customers. As a result, ensuring quality teams are equipped with the right tools to ensure standards are met at every stage of production is crucial.

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