Another Peanut Butter Victim

The PCA peanut butter Salmonella-contamination debacle might claim another victim: third-party auditing. Last week while watching Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, I heard the words “muckraking” and “food” in the same sentence, and a mention of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.” It was a reference to the New York Times article “Food Problems Elude Private Inspectors,” and the paper (as well as Maddow) implied something underhanded is going on: “auditors are also usually paid by the food plants they inspect, which some experts said could deter them from cracking down...” That strikes me as quite unfair.

While dishonesty surely exists in the world (which I understand also is occasionally practiced by government employees at various levels), no one I know ever considered an AIB audit a piece of cake.

Now, let’s say hypothetically, you’re in charge of plant QA. No matter whether your plant is squeaky clean or not so much, you’re not going to let your plant flunk this audit. Picture cleaning the house before the in-laws come to visit—you’re not leaving the dirty dishes in the sink, whether it’s a single teaspoon or all of last night’s dishes. And, as one of the supporting documents for the Times story said: “An audit is more likely to uncover bad practices. If someone does an illegal act, they are more likely to hide it, making detection in an audit much less likely.” And this was from a company in the business of third party audits.

The bottom line is, if you can’t trust your suppliers, complete dependence on a third-party audit is not going to ensure they follow the straight and narrow.

  —Lynn A. Kuntz