• The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is concerned with an increase in recent years in the number of recalls of meat and poultry products contaminated with foreign materials.  Notably, in many cases, the recalling establishments had received multiple customer complaints before these recalls.  Customer complaints for meat and poultry products can often signal adulteration or misbranding issues that trigger regulatory requirements under 9 C.F.R. Part 416 – Sanitation, Part 417 – Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) Systems, and Part 418 – Recalls.  FSIS recommends, but does not require, that an establishment develop a program to receive and process customer complaints.
  • On March 8, 2019, FSIS issued draft Guidelines for Industry Response to Customer Complaints to provide reference material on best practices and recommendations on how to receive, investigate and process customer complaints.  The new guidelines encompass all types of customer complaints, including quality issues that do not trigger regulatory requirements.  The new guidelines recommend also consulting a more narrowly focused related document developed by industry in 2018, Industry Best Practices for Customer Complaints of Foreign Material in Meat and Poultry Products.  When the evaluation, investigation, and corrective actions for FSIS regulated products are fully documented and available to FSIS for review upon request under a customer complaint program, the records of the program can be used to fulfill mandatory regulatory requirements.
  • The new FSIS guidelines address the following components of a consumer complaint program:  Customer Complaint Reporting, Substantiation of the Customer Complaint, Establishment Response to a Customer Complaint (including Establishment Response Plan and Investigation, FSIS Notification, and Corrective Actions), and Documentation of the Customer Complaint.  The new guidelines also provide an extensive discussion of 9 C.F.R. § 418.2 (“Notification”), which requires all establishments to report to the agency within 24 hours when they have shipped or received an adulterated USDA-regulated product and that product is in commerce.  FSIS stresses that product containing foreign material is adulterated even when a physical food safety hazard is not present.  Additionally, the new guidelines clarify when product is “in commerce” and when the 24‑hour time period starts.
  • FSIS will respond to public comments received by May 15, 2019 and will update the guideline as necessary.