Against the scenic backdrop of Lake Michigan at the Nixon Peabody offices, CFBN hosted its annual crisis management event. This year’s crisis focused on the complex theme of food safety. The session brought together a panel of leading experts to simulate a real-time crisis and share strategies for “navigating the storm”.

Here are some key take-aways from our expert panel:

• Prevention is key! Maintain a culture that values and consistently practices food safety on an ongoing basis. 
  
• Maintain a crisis manual. That is proactively created to ensure that your company is prepared when a crisis occurs. 
  
• Organize a cross-functional team with clear roles and responsibilities so that each individual knows their role when an issue occurs. 
  
• Be transparent and truthful in external communication. 
  
• Recognize and reward good behavior on an ongoing basis to set an example and reinforce a positive culture that prioritizes food safety.

Crisis Preparedness 

The expertise on the team resembled an all-star cross-functional management team. The panel simulated a crisis to demonstrate the roles of this cross-functional team during a food safety incident. Even before a crisis occurs, organizations must be equipped with a documented crisis management plan. Panelists emphasized the importance of conducting regular training exercises using mock scenarios. Chris Schlag, Counsel at Nixon Peabody noted the critical need to identify key stakeholders, such as customers and suppliers, and to establish communication protocols in advance.  

Immediate Crisis Response 

When a food safety incident emerges, panelists agreed the first priority is to locate the source, gather accurate data, and assess the scope of the issue. Sabahnur Demirci, VP Expert Partners Mérieux NutriSciences emphasized the importance of escalating the matter up in the organization quickly and gaining buy-in from management. 

From an insurance standpoint, Marty Detmer, Crisis Management, Product Recall & Contamination at AON advised involving internal risk managers and insurance brokers early, as various insurance lines might be involved – recall, casualty, etc. 

Matt de Nesnera, VP U.S. Crisis & Risk at Edelman underlined the importance of transparent communication. Rebuilding a damaged reputation takes time and involves transparency, but begins with clear and consistent communication during a crisis. Peter Begg, Chief Quality and Food Safety Officer at Lyons Magnus shared from experience that customers appreciate rapid and transparent communication and data sharing. Chris Schlag added that recovery is not just about regulatory compliance. Customer issues, supplier issues will emerge from it. In essence, our panel of experts all agreed that recovering from a recall is a long-term commitment.

Long-Term Strategies 

Matt de Nesnera stressed that before communicating recovery externally, companies must first resolve the underlying operational issues: “You can’t communicate your way out of an operational issue”, he noted.

While establishing a Food Safety Advisory Council can be beneficial, real change and impact must come from within the company. Ensuring the person responsible for food safety reports directly to a C-suite executive sends a powerful message. Brian Schaneberg, Executive Director at Illinois Tech Institute for Food Safety and Health strongly advocated for restoring the presence of scientific knowledge of food safety in the board room. Over time, this knowledge has diminished at the executive level, weakening the foundation across industry for a robust food safety culture. He also stressed the importance for food safety professionals to think outside the box and try not to be the ‘no-people’ in the room: suggesting opportunities builds credibility, and ensures that food safety is incorporated into key strategic conversations across the company. 

In his closing remarks, Peter Begg reminded us: even the best-run companies will face recalls. It’s part of working with people, he reminded the audience. A recall doesn’t mean the end of a brand – there are numerous examples of brands successfully navigating their way back into acceptance and growth over time. 

With that important reminder, conversations continued during the networking part of the event.