Question

In the summer of 2008, people began falling ill from listeriosis, a bacteria that can contaminate food. Twenty-two people died and many more were sick. The contamination was traced to Maple Leaf Foods, a large Canadian meat products manufacturer. The company took action to recall its products, identify the source of the contamination, and reassure the public. Today it successfully continues in business.

Course concepts that might apply to this business issue:

• Government regulation: what regulation affected this situation? What was Maple Leaf required to do?

• Operations: were there quality issues, or other operational issues, that played a role in this situation? • Business ethics, social responsibility: what did Maple Leaf do to act as a responsible corporate citizen in this crisis?

• Public relations and crisis management: What did the company do that helped it recover the public’s trust? What could it have done differently, or better?

Answer 1

Government Regulations: The government regulations were too relaxed to prevent such incidents. While the US Food safety organizations had warned for such incidents but the Canada Govt. did not take it seriously and continued with their relaxed approach which does not necessitate the frequent checks of the quality of food and processing unit and getting it certified for safety norms on a periodic basis. However, being a responsible corporate citizen the Maple Leaf would have done the best to protect their customer's health and should have gone far beyond the standard safety measures installed by the government as a mandatory requirement.

Operation: Certainly the issue can be attributed to the quality issue, after the investigation, it was discovered that these bacterias are present in the slicing machine which were not cleaned and sanitized frequently to prevent such incidents. As a responsible corporate citizen, the company should have gone for all the possible safety measures and should have done this extra control measure to sanitize the slicers too to prevent any such possibility. However, accepting the quality issue was the act of a responsible corporate citizen and the company recalled the huge mass of products from the shelf.

Public reaction and crisis management: The company adopted the best strategy to reach the public crisis situation and was able to manage the situation. The three actions namely, recall of the product, accepting the quality issue and public apology along with the commitment to prevent and reinforcement of control measures to prevent such incidents in the future helped in gaining the lost trust in a quick time. The sales which pulled to a 50% level gradually started to increase over a period of time.