How to reject a vendor

Hi all, we recently received a large shipment of raw materials to produce cannabis edibles. The vendor is not GMP (or anything similar) so I had them sign a Letter of Guarantee in short stating their products meets all applicable food regulations outlined by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act). TBH the LOG was a template and I'm not entirely sure what the FD&C binds them to.

Upon inspecting some of the materials we've discovered mold in many items and even had a couple lab tests of the finished product fail for microbial contamination.

Basically the vendor is trying to blame us for the mold and micro and we are trying to reject them as a vendor and get our money back. 

Is there a formal process for rejecting a vendor? Should I send them a letter and if so what should it say? Or do I simply reference the LOG and that they breached it and that's enough of a reason?

Any advice is greatly appreciated as always!

The vendor provided you with a COA for the product supplied?

How long do you have the product in your possession? If it is long, are you comfortable (and possibly have records) of your storage conditions?

Have you communicated any specifications of the incoming product with the vendor?

You can send a letter to your vendor and advise them of the rejection of the material, if this was recently received. You should include that on further inspections of the incoming material, issues were noticed (Mold & Micro). Do include the lab reports, if you have any from an outside lab.

Usually, if this is vendor that would like to do further business with your company and understands the issue with the product, they will work with you.

Otherwise this can escalate to a legal issue between your company and the vendor for invoicing/monetary reasons, in case the vendor blames your company for Mold and Micro issues.

Include documentation of inspection at receipt. Any photographic evidence and/or hand written notes with dates/times  will be helpful

The purchasing manger is the one who should be communicating, not you. Your role should be to provide all of the documentation to support the claim

most companies have approved supplier programs detailing what is required of each supplier prior to them actually providing product to you and your pre-work with each one details what steps will be taken should product fail your intake requirements.

you required them to submit something that you admit you don't understand - bind - yourself and now they have shipped you raw materials that for all intents violates standards as would be set within the context of an approved supplier program.

it sounds like you will need to seek the advice and action from an attorney at this point because the initial groundwork was not formulated properly on the front end.

Thanks for the quick replies. We are a start up company so often have to find creative solutions to our problems. The vendor told us verbally (regretfully no evidence of this) the materials could be stored at room temp, so they've been out in our warehouse that way for a few weeks. We have facility records showing the area never went above 70F or so-- looking back I'm sure they should have been refrigerated but vendor, nor their packaging indicated storage conditions. 

They did not provide any COAs, only the Letter of Guarantee. We test all finished products prior to release which is how we found the micro; we saw mold in one item and opened several more and it was in all of them.

Thanks again, this forum is always very helpful!

as we tell all of our start up clients - get everything documented, as in writing - everything.