What To Do With Recalled Products?

What do you do with all the products recovered from retail customers and consumers? Do you leave it to your retail customers or distributors to dispose of them? If not, where do you have the products sent to? Do they require certified destruction? Could they be re-formulated or corrected and then sent back out? What are the chances that your recalled products (and company name) could appear in headlines like this?

"Recalled products from a well known candy manufacturer being sold in Toronto area"
Chocolates and candies recalled two years ago over salmonella fears and subsequently stolen from a recycling depot are now being sold in Toronto-area stores, according to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Once you have decided that a recall is necessary, the focus is understandably on removing affected products from the supply chain and advising consumers not to use the product and what to do with it. This in itself can be a hugely complicated and difficult task. Once this is in progress, the tendency may be to start to attend to all the other routine business-related issues that have slipped while you've been in "recall mode". But there is another vital step still to carry out; what to do with all the product that's been recovered.

In some cases, you will have advised consumers and customers to dispose of the product themselves. In other cases, it will have been returned to your own facilities. Maybe it's all stacked neatly and securely in your own warehouse and you already know a specialised and approved disposal facility close by that will destroy the product beyond any possible further use. In RQA's experience it rarely works like that.

For more information on how RQA can help whether it's identifying disposal facilities, witnessing destruction, checking on storage of products worldwide or any other recall related matter, click here to contact us.

Case Studies

Product Recall Solutions
food industry

Product Cheese Incident Listeria monocytogenes Country United States Date 06/04/2010	All packages of white cheese are being recalled from consumers in the USA due to contamination with Listeria monocytogenes. The recall follows the result of a routine sampling program by the official authorities. No illnesses have been reported to date. The recall notification has been posted on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration website.
Product Cheese Incident Listeria monocytogenes Country United Kingdom Date 01/04/2010	The product is being recalled from consumers in the UK due to contamination with Listeria monocytogenes. No illnesses have been reported to date and the manufacturer displayed the recall notices in the relevant stores. It will alert customers to the product recall and advise them of what actions to take if they have purchased the affected products. The recall alert was posted on the Foods Standard Agency website

Product Cheese
Incident Listeria monocytogenes
Country United States
Date 06/04/2010

All packages of white cheese are being recalled from consumers in the USA due to contamination with Listeria monocytogenes. The recall follows the result of a routine sampling program by the official authorities. No illnesses have been reported to date. The recall notification has been posted on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration website.

Product Cheese
Incident Listeria monocytogenes
Country United Kingdom
Date 01/04/2010

The product is being recalled from consumers in the UK due to contamination with Listeria monocytogenes. No illnesses have been reported to date and the manufacturer displayed the recall notices in the relevant stores. It will alert customers to the product recall and advise them of what actions to take if they have purchased the affected products. The recall alert was posted on the Foods Standard Agency website

Product Recall Solutions
consumer products

Product Furniture Incident Risk of injuries Country France Date 09/04/2010	A Malaysian importer is recalling its products from consumers in France as the products pose a risk of injuries. There is a risk of trapping parts of the body if the user attempts to open the table whilst the table is upside down because the table might open violently. One incident has been reported to date. The RAPEX website has issued the recall alert.
Product Lamp Incident Electric shock Country Finland Date 09/04/2010	A Chinese distributor is recalling its products from Finland as it has been ordered by the official authorities. The product poses a risk of electric shock because the accessible metal body of the lamp is live. The product does not comply with the Low Voltage Directive and the European standard EN 60598.

Product Furniture
Incident Risk of injuries
Country France
Date 09/04/2010

A Malaysian importer is recalling its products from consumers in France as the products pose a risk of injuries. There is a risk of trapping parts of the body if the user attempts to open the table whilst the table is upside down because the table might open violently. One incident has been reported to date. The RAPEX website has issued the recall alert.

Product Lamp
Incident Electric shock
Country Finland
Date 09/04/2010

A Chinese distributor is recalling its products from Finland as it has been ordered by the official authorities. The product poses a risk of electric shock because the accessible metal body of the lamp is live. The product does not comply with the Low Voltage Directive and the European standard EN 60598.

RQA Europe Limited
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Reading RG6 6BZ
Tel 44 (0)118 935 72 42