Recent events in the food sector have shown that product recalls can destroy companies in a few weeks. Susan Birks reports on the recent Pharmig conference in Oxford, UK, which looked at ways of preventing, anticipating and also managing damaging recalls in the cosmetics and toiletries industry.
Product recalls were fresh in delegates’ minds at the recent Pharmig conference, as the ‘horsemeat in beefburgers scandal’ was still making newspaper headlines. The conference, aimed at the personal care industry but of relevance to pharma and food sectors too, covered several topics including: recent legislative changes; microbiological and contamination issues; and managing product recalls – so it had a particular poignancy.
Brand image is crucial to all these sectors and effective microbiological control is key to ensuring product safety, quality and image – thus protecting a company’s bottom line. But speaker David Keen, Microbiology Manager, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), highlighted the unique difficulties that microbiology departments face in communicating contamination risks to other departments.
‘Factory managers find microbiology issues the most difficult to comprehend,’ he said. This is in part due to the fact that, in all other areas ‘an issue is an issue’ but in the case of microbiology, products can rapidly change from being ‘in spec’ to ‘out of spec’ and back in spec. ‘Deciding if there is an issue is complex, even for a microbiologist,’ Keen admitted.
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