Food safety is a crucial factor for airlines, which need to prevent any foodborne illnesses that can cause sickness in passengers and crew. Unlike food safety breaches and recalls on the ground, unique circumstances can escalate these issues in the air:
- Incapacitated crew members can risk flight safety.
- Since airplanes lack medical facilities, severely ill patients can’t access immediate medical treatment for severe illnesses mid-flight, which may be life-threatening in certain circumstances.
- The limited number of lavatories onboard can lead to sanitation and logistical challenges when many passengers and crew members are ill simultaneously.
- Contamination and liability risks on airlines can be heightened due to complex logistics and varying international food safety standards.
So who is to blame when a recall happens in the air? There’s lots of finger pointing by the public, the media, and even the trading partners of companies issuing recalls. In reality, focusing too much on liability distracts from the real issue: process breakdown.
Understandably, people have concerns when recalls happen. Consumers count on companies to keep them safe, especially at 30,000 feet in the air. When there’s a breach in the air or on the ground, consumers want to know who’s at fault. But finger pointing distracts from the real issue of process breakdown.
Instead of looking for someone to take the fall, let’s demand more prepared, resilient supply chains that work together to prevent these safety breaches from occurring – and contain the damage and protect the public when they do.
Make recalls a shared supply chain process
Recent food recalls that have impacted airports and airlines include ready-to-eat sandwiches and salads sold at airports, among other locations, which were recalled due to Listeria contamination.
Also, a major commercial airline had to divert to a nearby airport after inadvertently serving contaminated food mid-flight, and a major commercial airline pulled meal service on 200 flights due to a “food safety issue” in its flight kitchen.
In order to execute recalls effectively, companies must shift from thinking of recalls as individual company activities, and instead view these events as a shared supply chain process.
For example, imagine if a manufacturer, despite taking every precaution, has a food safety breach that results in a recall. They would notify their trading partners, explaining what happened and what comes next. Now, imagine that their distribution centre continues to deliver the contaminated food, and an airline receives it and serves it.
While the manufacturer may have been the one to initiate the recall, if a distributor continues to ship a recalled product or an airline continues to serve contaminated items, liability can shift fast. But the most pressing question isn’t who is to blame – it is what caused the process to break down.
Did the manufacturer fail to communicate effectively? Did the distribution centre misunderstand which products were recalled? Did the airline fail to take appropriate action? And how can trading partners prevent similar breakdowns in the future?
Part of the solution includes shifting mindsets. Instead of worrying about liability, trading partners must focus on preventing breaches, reducing risk, and proactively preparing for recalls, working collaboratively across the supply chain. These efforts help protect public health and brand reputation.
Liability shouldn’t be the driving question
When something goes wrong, it is human nature to want to know who’s to blame. Holding companies accountable is important. Every company across the supply chain has an obligation to help protect public health, regardless of whether they were at fault or not. Focusing solely on avoiding liability can distract companies from doing the important work of making sure the recall is effective for protecting public health.
To handle a recall well, companies should:
- Work collaboratively. When supply chains work together and respond properly to recalls, they help mitigate exposure and legal consequences across the chain. Of course, the converse is also true. If trading partners don’t work collaboratively, communicate well, and contain the damage, it can dramatically increase risks, disruptions, costs, liability, and reputational damage for the companies involved.
- Focus on responsibility and execution. Every company across the supply chain has a duty to act on recalls swiftly and properly when risk is identified. They should recognise that responsibility is shared, regardless of where and how the breach happened. When each company does its part to execute the recall, it minimises risk and damage to the supply chain and the public.
- Boost resilience to reduce liability. Resilience is essential. In this context, resilience is a deliberate process built on preparation. True resilience assumes disruption will happen, and a supply chain should be ready to respond with clarity, cooperation, and control when it does. Trading partners must work together to plan, practice, and coordinate ahead of time so they can share systems, processes and data long before a recall occurs. When supply chains work together to become resilient, replacing siloed systems and fragmented workflows, trading partners will experience less damage, disruption, expense and liability. And, importantly, they will protect the public and their brands.
- Reduce harm. Work with trading partners to reduce exposure by communicating quickly and clearly, pulling contaminated products from the marketplace, and using best practice recall protocols. This helps reduce harm, preserve trust, and prevent liability from becoming a front-page issue.
Recalls are a test of readiness. Recalls don’t fail because companies are careless. They fail because companies operate in silos until something goes wrong – and then they may worry more about avoiding liability than doing the right thing to protect the public.
In a high-stakes airline environment, that approach can be catastrophic. Trading partners need to have shared systems, defined roles, and practiced protocols before a recall happens, so the response is faster, the damage smaller, and the public better protected.
About the author: Roger Hancock, CEO of Recall InfoLink, is one of the world’s foremost experts on recalls, with experience that spans the retail, tech, data, regulatory, and supply chain. Recall InfoLink is the only company focused entirely on recalls, with solutions that drive immediate action, streamline the recall process, and simplify compliance. Roger is also a steering committee member of the Alliance for Recall Ready Communities.
