Boar's Head is an upmarket brand in the deli meats and cheeses market. Last month it recalled over 200,000 lbs (almost 100,000 KG) of meat following a listeria outbreak.
Yesterday, the Washington Post reported multiple "non compliances" against the company had been noted in a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Report referring to 57 different days between August 2023 and July 2024. While regulators sometimes claim they are under resourced and cannot cope with the number of inspections required to keep the food chain hygienic, in this case the USDA seems to have been conducting the inspections, but follow up action seems to have been sparse.
We certainly don't have all the facts in this case, but we do know that there are often failures in regulation for a number of different reasons:
- Regulatory Capture: sometimes the regulators end up acting in the interests of the regulated industry, not the public.
- Inadequate enforcement powers: sometimes regulators have the will to enforce, but lack the powers.
- Over-regulation: sometimes regulations are so onerous it is impossible to avoid breaching them, so regulated industries treat the fines as an inevitable cost of business.
- Inadequate management: sometimes the business lacks the capacity to reform itself.
We don't know which, if any, of the above applies in this instance.
What does seem likely is that greater transparency would have helped. With numerous breaches of regulations, including some which are serious, such as "mold, mildew, and insects", the company would seem to have a clear interest in cleaning things up even if fines were not administered or were inadequate. The risk of litigation and reputational damage are plainly significant in this instance, and were even before the deadly listeria outbreak, which will be connected with the issue in the public mind, even if the hygiene failures did not cause the deaths.
Ultimately, reports such as this are covered by the Freedom of Information Act. The information does get out, but if that is after extensive delays the company may have already improved the situation before anyone has a chance to act on the information. A hurried report, to which the company has not had a chance to respond, could easily cause a lot of harm if it was incorrect or lacked critical context, but proceeding as quickly as possible towards full transparency seems to be of great value to the public.
If the USDA had unequivocal evidence of serious hygiene problems last year, relying on whistleblowers to put the matter in the public domain is a policy failure. If this information was not publicly shared early in the process, we should ask why not.