Are you paying attention to resources you have?
If not, it might cost you your reputation and business.
By Trevor Morones, CQA
November 29, 2024
It’s a critical time for everyone in Quality Management Systems (QMS) to be aware and engaged — or risk losing money while paying lawyers at the same time.
Ask anyone familiar with recent recalls involving McDonald’s, Boars Head, or BrucePac about the real cost of outbreaks:
Deaths.
Hospitalizations.
Production plant and restaurant closures.
Lawsuits.
Investigations.
Reputations.
Loss of team morale.
Consider approximately 18.7 million pounds of recalled products between the two brands, BrucePac and Boars Head Provision Co.; quantitatively, not accounting for the McDonald’s Corporation yellow onion E.coli outbreak traced to supplier Taylor Farms California Inc.
If you’re selling to Walmart, Costco, or customers you need, it’s a perfect time to optimize resources already present in your organization. If you don’t, there are real threats to customers paying for your products.
You are on the frontline of food safety. Short-term profit at the expense of food safety can cost lives, money, reputations, customers, morale, and the entire business.
Look at the money, equipment, information, intellectual property, human resources, and innovation you have access to and act.
You might think QMS isn’t valuable because there isn’t a significant return on investment, but you have an opportunity right now to be ahead of the curve. Paying attention to QMS is fruitful for operations and makes a difference when you’re in Cost of Quality.
People with little knowledge about QMS are making decisions that affect businesses. Seismic is an understatement for a 6-3 ruling to expand the Supreme Court and Federal Judiciary. Before that vote, the effect was absent in overruling Chevron.
The accomplishment of overturning Chevron doctrine fundamentally reshaped administrative law and eliminated the requirement that courts defer to agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous statutes. Instead, courts must exercise “independent judgment” in determining the meaning of statutory provisions, although they may still seek aid from well-reasoned or long-standing agency interpretations.
It is a significant victory for those challenging federal law, advocating for reduced bureaucracy, and engaging in corruption and self-serving actions. This decision grants Congress the opportunity to adopt a new approach to law-making. The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision on June 28, 2024, was an interesting moment in legal history.
A hypothesis is that victory could reduce or remove the red tape, and severely affect people. Power is removed from people, civil service officials, public servants, or public employees. People empowered in the public sector dedicate careers to serving the public from employment by a government department or agency. Enforcers don’t issue fines and fees to fill government accounts for lavish expenditures. The hypothesis supports the victory to implement change for the interest of corporate bottom lines.
Pathogen interpretation affects some changes for product safety but will require lawsuits with different interpretations of food safety. Detrimental to health, infectious doses of pathogens, such as Salmonella and pathogenic E. coli, require significant data — and more than independent judgment.
What does this mean for product safety of:
baby formula,
pet food,
animal feed,
drugs,
devices, and
the environment?
On the environment and solutions to challenges beyond the environment, Carl Sagan, testifying before Congress in 1985 on climate change, said in closing, “I think that what is essential for this problem is a global consciousness, a view that transcends our exclusive identifications with the generational and political groupings into which by accident we have been born. The solution to these problems requires a perspective that embraces the planet and the future because we are all in this greenhouse together.” (https://wordlesstech.com/carl-sagan-testifying-before- congress-in-1985-on-climate-change/)
Let’s embrace the planet and the future; let’s communicate together for the benefit of all. Engage in work to create guides or standards within ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials International) that become part of the law internationally.
What are this decision’s immediate and future effects on administrative law, product safety, and environmental concerns?
How does this impact our product safety?
How will the overturn affect the timeliness of recalls, removing potentially dangerous products from the market?
How do we balance emerging pathogens with scientific thinking?
An opportunity from the ruling is to stay engaged with what is so. Reframe and reset to forge forward ahead of the curve. Change is the only constant, and QMS provides pathways to endless improvement opportunities. QMS applies to any organization, regardless of its type or size or the products and services it provides (https://doi.org/10.22190/FUME230831037B). Critical thinking and public policy engagement are vital in navigating these changes.
One way to identify any root cause is to ask WHY five times. This is an invitation for you to become engaged and more curious.
Beyond paying attention to the assets you already have in business, empower yourself to view facts from multiple angles and communicate.
Stay well informed, use common sense, vote for your community representatives and constituents, and actively work with agencies, understanding that the people at the helm of the agencies have the people’s safety in mind.
Use the communication skill of listening to the opposition. Your engagement in every level of the process is crucial in shaping the future of business, our legal system and public policy.
Photo credit: Heidi Jo Wayco Berden
Tray of eyeballs shot at slaughterhouse circa 1987, during photoshoot for black-and-white photography class.
