I chatted with my friend and fellow HP colleague, Mick Keyes, a business/technology strategist in Dublin and an expert on Track and Trace, about the Irish pork recall. Mick provided me with some of the personal aspects of the recall.

According to Mick, This a bad one ok. The effects are becoming obvious. Over 1000+ workers laid off in past few hrs as processing plants grind to a halt. 12 EU sites have banned all Pork from Ireland (this is a 400 Million euro export business that is affected). You can see how the whole banking/Credit crunch is intersecting with this in real time. Plants can't get credit to pay workers or suppliers so its immediate "close down" and layoff workers. Industry now reckons this is going to cost $1 billion over all..and they want a Govt. bail out. Retailers want compensation. Consumers want compensation. It is a mess. Very sad listening to small family owned business crying on radio shows in abject desperation. The size of recall (i.e. ALL pork products/Whole industry ) is raising question about how effective Traceability systems are in protecting those that haven't done "anything wrong".

Terrible to think about all these affected people, with little recourse. And, they have to pull all products when 10% (of the farms) of the 10% (dating from the correct period) of the products on the shelf are affected. Not a sustainable method forward. As times get tougher and wallets thinner, we're simply going to have to have a better way to manage how we separate the good from the bad.  And, with higher confidence so consumers do not turn away from the industry en masse. Tomatoes, milk, pork--that just about covers my Uncle's entire diet. If Guinness is recalled, he's going hungry for the Holidays. I'll bet he's noticing. Food may be the tipping point that many thought pharmaceutics would be.

The point on the availability of credit cannot be overstated. Without access to easy credit--a reversal of the past 15+ years--there is no margin for error. When profits can't be made, there's nothing in reserve. The just-in-time supply chain can quickly become the just-no-time response. If there's no slack in the system, then contingencies must be incorporated in the design.  In future blogs, I will describe how come of these concerns are being addressed.

-Steve