With 9 dead with Listeria, what questions would you ask Boar’s Head and FSIS

The great thing about my job is that I know a lot of smart people in Food Safety who really care. Over the last few days people have sent me questions that need to be asked and answered by Boar’s Head and the regulators, FSIS. Feel free to shoot me any other suggestions.

USDA FSIS Questions:  Authority, organizational, procedural and data related questions: 

• Inspections:
  • Who, what are the names of each of the individuals that performed these inspections?
    • What are the FSIS VA Contracted employees qualifications to perform these inspections?
    • How frequently were they at the plant?
  • Who do the contracted FSIS VA inspectors report to?
    • Who reviews their inspections?  We want names . . . 
    • How quickly are their reports written and submitted after the inspections? Report Turn Around Time “TAT”?
    • Who manages the Corrective Action Procedures?  Is this done by the VA office, or federal FSIS, or both?
      • Are the Corrective Actions resolved through an objective and verified process.
        • EX. Did the plant send a picture or document of the corrective actions and an inspector or their boss sign off on it?
    • Where is the inspection data managed, and is the data managed so FSIS can see food safety risks and trends?
      • Is there a time stamp on report data?
      • Is there an ability for Corrective actions to be tracked within the system
      • Are there unique identification for who approves reports, corrective actions, etc.
• Listeria Testing:
  • Where are the test results stored?
  • Who has access to them?
  • Who makes decisions on NR and Correcting Actions?
  • Where are the results of corrective actions?
  • Is this data easy to analyze for food safety risks and trends?
• Authority:
  • Can FSIS shut down a facility for being unsanitary? AND by extension, does the VA State Contracted FSIS have the authority to shut down a facility for being unsanitary?
    • If yes,
      • Why wasn’t this plant shut down? 
      • Was it not “unsanitary enough”?  
      • If this is not bad enough to shut down, what is?
    • If no,
      • Who has the authority to shut a plant down? 
      • What is the process to get the information to that department?
      • Why wasn’t that done for this Boar’s Head Facility?

Boar’s Head Questions:  Procedures, testing, auditing, data management, management: 

• Provide Evidence for All Internal and 3rd Party Food Safety Audits and Inspections
  • Would you be willing to provide all 3rd party SQF audits performed by Eagle Certification Over the last 3 years for Every Boar’s Head Facility?
    • To have an SQF Certification you need an Food Safety Program, would you be willing to provide the full food safety program all SOPs and Logs used to gain that certification?
    • Would you be willing to provide all Non-Conformances Found and all Corrective Actions performed?
  • What made you choose Eagle Certification as your SQF Certification Body?
  • Who was your Certification Body prior to Eagle Certification?
    • If you changed Certification Bodies, why did you change?
• Sanitation, Environmental Monitoring, Product Testing & Laboratory:
  • What lab was used for environmental monitoring and product testing?
    • Provide lab accreditations, eg ISO 17025
    • Provide all lab results
  • Provide the SOP for Boar’s Heads Sanitation Program
    • Provide all logs that go with the SOP
  • Provide the SOP for their “Environmental Testing Program”
    • Provide all logs that go with the SOP
• Food Safety Management Org Structure:
  • Can you provide a corporate org chart for food safety decisions?
  • Who manages food safety at the Virginia Facility?
  • Who at the corporation headquarters managed food safety for all boar’s head food safety?
  • Did Boar’s Head executive visit the virgina facility?  Were their unannounced internal food safety audits and inspections on your facilities?
    • If so, can you please provide the inspections, audits, and corrective actions?
  • Was Boar’s Head Executives aware of all the FSIS inspections performed, non-conformances found, and corrective actions (or lack thereof) performed?
    • If so, why was there no executive management and follow through on the numerous food safety issues found?
    • If not, why?  AND are their processes now to make sure corporate executives are tracking food safety issues at each facility level?
      • If there are processes, can you please share them?
• Recall Management and Deli Sanitation: (We want to make sure more listeria issues don’t pop up from random deli’s in the future)
  • Can you please provide the SOP for your product recall program?
  • Can you please provide the documented steps you did to manage the current recall for all the products you have voluntarily recalled over the last year?
  • How many of your customers did you reach out to?
  • What did you tell your customers to do with the contaminated product(s)?
    • Were you able to track what customers performed the requested actions?
  • Can you provide the correspondence sent to your customers?
    • Did you track what customers saw, replied, or did not respond to your recall?

Republished with permission from Bill Marler and Marler Clark. Copyright (c) Marler Clark LLP, PS. All rights reserved.