How to run a mock recall in a food plant and what records you need

A mock recall is a drill. Choose a finished lot that left the plant weeks ago, since older lots hide far more gaps than yesterday’s output, and nobody remembers how they were made. Pick a product with several inputs, such as a spice blend with chilli, coriander, salt and an anticaking agent, since single-ingredient lots reveal very little.

Name a team leader and a timekeeper. The leader’s one question is where every unit of this lot sits, and every answer needs a goods receipt, batch card or invoice that a stranger could follow. Nobody answers from memory.

Decide what counts as success. A common test is to account for the full quantity produced against the quantity found in stock, in transit and with buyers.

Start at the label. The batch code on the pack should lead to the production record for that shift, and from there to every ingredient lot used, including packaging film, cartons and additives. Retention samples, metal detector logs and the allergen changeover sheet for that shift belong in the same folder, and the drill should pull them out as well.

Each ingredient lot should lead to a goods receipt, a supplier name and the supplier’s own lot or invoice, so check for certificates of analysis and weighbridge slips too.

Gaps show up fast. A hand-written register line reading flour, two bags does not identify a lot, so mark it as a failed trace and move to the next ingredient.

Now work the other way. Find every pallet and carton produced in that batch, then check how many sit in your store, which invoice carried the rest and which vehicle took them.

Each invoice should name the lot. If it names only the product, you are guessing which batch went to which buyer, and in practice that means phoning every customer who bought the item. Pallet labels, cold chain logs and the transporter’s lorry receipt show where the product went after it left the gate, and they often disagree with the invoice.

Distributors add a layer. Ask each distributor whether they still hold the lot, resold it or returned it, because your forward trace stops where your last record stops. Push that point down the chain.

Write the time taken and the quantity accounted for, because a complete answer that arrives after two days is still slow when a buyer is waiting on the phone. A quality manager who can account for nearly every carton within two hours holds a stronger position with a retail buyer. A promise to check later does not.

Sort each gap by cause. Some are missing fields, like a blank supplier lot, some are habits, like merged batches on the line, and others are separate stock and billing spreadsheets that never meet.

Rank the gaps by how often they would hurt in a real recall, fix the top three, then drill again on the same lot to prove the fix worked.

Software helps when every record carries a lot number, so one search on a finished lot lists ingredients, suppliers, shifts, pallets and buyers on a single screen.

It also forces the discipline. A goods receipt cannot be saved without a supplier lot and a dispatch note cannot be printed without a batch, whereas paper never refuses an entry. Mandatory fields help most at three points: the goods receipt, the batch record and the dispatch note, because those three records join the whole chain together.

Repeat the drill every quarter with a different product, and keep each run’s drill sheet in one folder so the next auditor sees how the answers improved.