How often have you seen DataBreaches heap praise on an entity for its incident response or transparency? Not too often, right? But DataBreaches is super-impressed by how Boar’s Head has responded to a food safety incident. No, this wasn’t any data security breach or privacy data breach, but it was an incident that had harmed the health of some of consumers, could have harmed more, and definitely could have significantly harmed consumer trust and their reputation. But they handled it all magnificently.
Seriously — I do not have enough words of praise for their handling of a situation. They responded quickly, they responded prudently with the best interest of consumers in mind, and they responded transparently — admitting publicly to their problems. Here is just a portion of their recall notice:
First and foremost, our investigation has identified the root cause of the contamination as a specific production process that only existed at the Jarratt facility and was used only for liverwurst. With this discovery, we have decided to permanently discontinue liverwurst.
In response to the inspection records and noncompliance reports at the Jarratt plant, we will not make excuses. In the spirit of complete transparency, we are sharing with you the July 31, 2024 USDA Notice of Suspension received by our Jarratt facility here.
Given the seriousness of the outbreak, and the fact that it originated at Jarratt, we have made the difficult decision to indefinitely close this location, which has not been operational since late July 2024. It pains us to impact the livelihoods of hundreds of hard-working employees. We do not take lightly our responsibility as one of the area’s largest employers. But, under these circumstances, we feel that a plant closure is the most prudent course. We will work to assist each of our employees in the transition process.
This is a dark moment in our company’s history, but we intend to use this as an opportunity to enhance food safety programs not just for our company, but for the entire industry.
They then detail other changes and protections they have put into place.
If there’s a way to inspire more confidence in a product following a safety issue like listeria contamination, then Boar’s Head has achieved that with their response and their transparency. As a consumer, I have absolutely no hesitation in purchasing their products again.
Read their entire recall notice to see more examples of how they handled their response and transparency brilliantly.
Now let’s see more data breach victims stand up and be as responsive and transparent in responding to data breaches.
h/t, @Viss for making us aware of the company’s great response.