This blog contains posts and comments written by students in Dr. Tufte's economics classes at Southern Utah University.
4/15/2007
Follow-up on Menu Foods
Earlier in the semester I published a post concerning Menu Foods and their recall of approximately 60 million cans of pet food. I was curious what had happened and how the situation was looking for Menu Foods so I decided to follow up on it. They definitely did the right thing on recalling the pet food. Melamine, a fertilizer used in Asia and aminopterin, a rat poison were found in tests done on Menu Food products. As of March 20, 14 pets were declared dead by the FDA because of tainted pet food produced by Menu Foods. The original recall was on March 16. Since then the recall has been expanded twice to cover all of the suspect gluten used in various Menu Foods plants and products. An article in USA Today says that a “clerical error” was to blame for all of the contaminated gluten not being discovered the first time. While Menu Foods appeared to be taking the necessary steps to be socially responsible, they are now facing several law suits because they failed to properly track and record their shipments.
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2 comments:
I think that the company is doing the right thing. I think the fact that they are expanding their recall shows that they are really concerned about the damaging effects and externalities that could be caused by their products. I always wonder about companies suing because of a company error. I don't think that it is a terrible thing but at the same time I'm not sure that, with all Menu Foods is doing to remedy the situation, it is correct to be suing them for negligence or poor business practices or whatever the case may be.
This is a tough one to call.
Certainly it would be better if this had never occurred. But, it did. Mistakes happen, but it isn't clear whether or not this was a mistake. It does seem to be the case the Menu Foods crisis management is OK. The whole situation could be a lot worse.
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