Recall Fatigue

  • It’s the medium and the message: rapid reliable relevant repeated messages to combat recall fatigue

    Posted: July 28th, 2010 - 11:21am by Doug Powell

    Until three years ago, Kenneth Maxwell enjoyed Banquet chicken and turkey pot pies so much he ate them three or four times a week. They were easy to prepare, and Maxwell could eat one for lunch and quickly return to work as an electrician.

    When cases of salmonella poisoning led the pies' manufacturer, ConAgra Foods, to issue a product recall in the fall of 2007, Maxwell did not hear about it and continued to eat them. He bought several pot pies about two weeks after the recall was launched, when they should have been pulled from store shelves, and became violently ill, he said.

    Steve Mills of the Chicago Tribune reports this morning that Maxwell's experience reflects common problems with food recalls: They routinely fail to recover all of the product they seek and, according to experts, sometimes even leave tainted foods in stores, putting consumers at risk of becoming ill from potentially deadly foodborne pathogens.

    If consumers are suffering from recall fatigue, what about retailers who are supposed to get potentially contaminated product off the shelves?

    Communications about recalls with both the public and retailers, must be rapid, reliable, repeated and relevant, and that the produce outbreaks of 2006 marked significant changes in how recall stories were being told on Internet-based networking like YouTube, wikipedia, and blogs.

    The Tribune story says a spokesman for Jewel-Osco's corporate parent said relying on the media, posting shelf notices and making sure store employees are prepared to answer customers' questions all have worked with recalls in the past.

    Safeway, the parent of Dominick's food stores, contacts shoppers directly in some recalls — typically smaller ones, said spokesman Brian Dowling. But in larger recalls, he said the company's stores rely on other methods to get the word out, such as notices on store shelves and stories in newspapers and on TV and radio.

    The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently released the Government's Products Recall app for the Android smartphone at USA.gov website.

    And it will be the same boring message. Marshall McLuhan famously said “The medium is the message” (that’s him above, right, in a scene from the movie, Annie Hall). With food safety recalls, it’s the medium and the message, if you want to get people’s attention.

    The Maxwells said they have not eaten a Banquet pot pie since the recall.
     

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  • Recall fatigue? Rapid, reliable, relevant and repeated messages work; shock and shame to avoid boredom

    Posted: July 2nd, 2010 - 9:48am by Doug Powell

    Julie Schmit and Elizabeth Weise reported in USA Today on July 27, 2007 that retailers have been slow to pull Castleberry's canned chili products that may contain botulism.

    Robert Brackett, then director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (best wishes on the new Illinois job, Bob -- dp) said consumers may be suffering "recall fatigue," given the rash of recalls the past year for spinach, carrot juice, lettuce, peanut butter, pet food and other products. "That's a real phenomenon. If people aren't getting sick or their family isn't, they think 'Oh, it's not going to happen to me.'"

    I told the reporters at the time that public communications about such undertaking must be rapid, reliable, repeated and relevant, and that the produce outbreaks of 2006 marked significant changes in how stories were being told on Internet-based networking like YouTube, wikipedia, and blogs. Producers, processors, retailers and regulators of agricultural commodities not only need to be seen -- and actually -- responding to food safety issues in conventional media, they must now pay particular attention to the myriad of Internet-based social networking sites that allow individuals to act as their own media outlet. Further, proactive producers, regulators and others in the farm-to-fork food safety system will become comfortable with the directness -- and especially the speed -- of new Internet-based media.

    Three years later, the Washington Post reported this morning that government regulators, retailers, manufacturers and consumer experts are concerned that recall notices have become so frequent across a range of goods -- foods, consumer products, cars -- that the public is suffering from "recall fatigue."

    Witty.

    In many cases, people simply ignore urgent calls to destroy or return defective goods.
    One recent study found that 12 percent of Americans who knew they had recalled food at home ate it anyway.

    Jeff Farrar, associate commissioner for food protection at the Food and Drug Administration, who said even his wife has complained about the difficulty of keeping pace with recalls, added,

    "It's a real issue. That number is steadily going up, and it's difficult for us to get the word out without oversaturating consumers."

    Craig Wilson, assistant vice president for quality assurance and food safety at Costco, was quoted as saying,

    "The national recall system that's in place now just doesn't work. We call it the Chicken Little syndrome. If you keep shouting at the wind -- 'The sky is falling! The sky is falling!' -- people literally become immune to the message."

    The U.S. Department of Agriculture today said the Government's Products Recall app for the Android smartphone is now available at the revamped USA.gov website, and the apps for Blackberry and iPhone are soon to follow.

    And it will be the same boring message. It’s the medium and the message, if you want to get people’s attention.

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