I have the greatest respect for any food business that carries out a public recall of a product before there’s been any reported cases of illness, and recently we had a precautionary recall due to suspected Listeria in fruit – but then they spoilt it, in my eyes anyway, by using that well-worn phrase “Out of an abundance of caution”.
I remember from my Crisis Communication training that we need to use everyday words to show our customers that we care, but I don’t remember the part where we should aim to sound the Pilgrim Fathers. “Out of an abundance of caution, thus we anchored the Mayflower three leagues off the lee shore and caste ourselves upon the waves in our trusty long boats to explore the New Worlde”.
The first use of ‘abundance of caution’ that I could find was from 2009 when Greg Craig, Senior Counsel at the Whitehouse, made a press statement about President Obama having to restate his oath due to a minor technical issue. Mr Craig is a lawyer, so he’s expected to speak like a founder of the New Worlde. The phrase was used again during an Ebola outbreak in 2014 when many schools were closed, and perhaps senior medical officers can just about pull it off, especially as doctors apparently speak Latin in their coffee breaks, but as food industry professionals I think we really need to find a new phrase.
As an experiment try to weave the word ‘abundance’ into your water cooler gossip in the office and see what sort of reaction you get. “I went to this great new seafood restaurant at the weekend and had an abundance of lobster”. And just for fun I dare anyone to publicize a recall with the phrase “Out of an overabundance of caution ….. “.
So what should be our new phrase? I was impressed with the press statement from Tony Fernandez, the owner of Air Asia, after the crash of flight QZ8501; “I am the leader of the company. I take responsibility. The passengers were on my aircraft and I have to take responsibility for that”. His lawyers must have had a heart attack when they saw the draft, but he’s the owner so he can say what he likes. As food safety professionals we need to choose words more carefully, but can’t we just say what we mean? Perhaps something like; “although there’s been no reported cases of illness, our testing program found some possible issues, so I decided to recall our product to remove any risk to our customers”.