Peanut Butter Recall 2009

In case you don't have the direct link to the FDA's info page on this recall, here it is.

As of 1/23/09 the FDA has officially declared Peanut Corporation of America as the source based on genetic testing.

Here's my question:
How are recalls still trickling in? Do manufacturing facilities have such poor documentation of ingredients (in this case major ingredients) that they don't know who their supplier is? Is PCA not getting the information out to everyone its sold product to in the last 6 months?

"King Nut" issued its recall on January 11. At that point PCA should have been jumping all over this to figure out the extent of this. The fact that we had a recall announcement yesterday (Jan 26), more than 2 weeks after the initial announcement really bothers me. There is a breakdown in the system somewhere.

What I would like the FDA to investigate is the document trail from PCA through its distributors to the manufacturers that used the product to determine why it took so long to get this information out.

The investigation into "how" the peanut butter got contaminated is less interesting to me. Good GMP's weren't followed somewhere in the PCA plant. An employee likely didn't wash his/her hands or an infrastructure problem didn't get solved in a timely manner. Yes, I want to know the final outcome so that I can hold it up to employees and management at my factories to say "when you don't do what you're supposed to do, this can happen!" but I'm more interested to find out why the response from manufacturing firms using the peanut butter or peanut paste was so slow (not in all cases).

Your thoughts?

Intro Post

Who am I and why am I blogging about Quality?

Reasonable questions if you're going to spend any time reading what I have to say.

I am a food quality professional. I have worked in Quality Control/Assurance for over 13 years. I have worked at factories that produced major a baking ingredient and at a factory that produced a very minor chemical additive for food products. I have worked in a meat & poultry facility and in bakeries. I have worked in Six Sigma enviornments and in ISO 9000 factories. I have seen really great HACCP plans and some plans that were in need of major refinement and focus. I won't say that I've seen it all (I've been fortunate enough to have avoided working through an actual recall), but I've seen quite a lot.

I am writing about Quality in the hopes of stirring discussions & debates about ideas, issues, & trends in the industry. I hope that you enjoy what I have to say and I hope that you'll contribute your thoughts in the comments section.

Enjoy & Think Quality!