03.31.07
Pet Food And Crisis Management
Something happens. Whether it was your company’s fault or not, you are now in crisis mode. The PR group wants to say something along the lines of “there was a problem, but it was limited to this and that areas”. The problem is, you do not know how widespread the problem is, what products or locations it may affect. What do you do?
Your legal department is now on the line. Mr. Legal Beagle reminds you that admitting fault and taking responsibility could have legal consequences when people decide to sue. He agrees with the PR group–limit what you admit to, until you are absolutely sure that the problem goes beyond what you’ve spoken.
Unfortunately, this is the way the game is played. In large businesses, where shrewd lawyers can deflect claims even where members of the public have legitimately been harmed, maybe this can be a successful tactic. In a smaller, owner-managed business, “playing the game” can mean the end of the business. Your best bet is to be brutally honest: “We do not know how far this reaches yet, so we urge you to avoid anything on this list….”
We need to learn some “Lessons From Pet Food.”
I spent nearly an hour on the phone with Pedigree today. We had recently switched brands of dog food and have been trying to keep track of what is or is not good to feed to the dogs and cats. Currently, we have both Pedigree and Purina dry food (no wet food). We wanted to make sure that none of our pet foods were made by the contractor in question–since they change the scope of this thing almost daily, I’d rather not have anything to do with their products for a while–and have been calling repeatedly to try to talk to someone to ask.
All I wanted to know is this: is $PRODUCTNAME made by $CONTRACTOR? It should not take repeated telephone calls over a period of days to get the answer to that question.
No well-run company should make this mistake. Make it easy to find out whether your customers are affected by the problem–and I do not mean PR bullshit–meaning everything that YOU know, THEY should know.
Purina also had a long telephone wait, but in their case, their Web site clearly said that they make almost all of their own products. Because Purina made it clear and Pedigree made it difficult, we are now a Purina household.
I want to take this opportunity to propose a solution that would have made it much easier to find out what I wanted to know: Congress: The FDA should have required many years ago that all consumer foodstuffs (that is, food for humans or pets) be clearly marked in plain English with (1) the name of the company whose brand it is sold under, (2) the name of the company that actually made and / or packaged the product, (3) the location where the product was made and / or packaged, and (4) the “USE BY” date, in ISO-standard YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM format. Since they refuse to do this, I urge you to do their job for them. Require this for all food products entering the consumer market on or after January 1, 2008 (or 2008-01-01 00:00).
Please take this opportunity to contact your congressional representatives, referring them to this page if necessary.
