Good morning everyone,
I have been hit with an ethical and potentially legal issue that, while I already know what I am going to do, I wish to pose the question to my fellow food safety champions more as a validation of my own thoughts and feelings on the matter.
Here it goes..
My boss, the Director of Quality, went on vacation for a week. In her absence I have been working on some extra aspects on the business. Today, I learned that our company shipped some product that had been on hand since November due to being previously rejected by a customer due to both non-conforming AND missing micro testing. After investigating I determined that the non-conforming and missing testing requirements were never followed up on and seemingly the product was just shipped again to the customer without their approval or a waiver. I acted immediately and engaged all resources to bring this product back (thankfully it was in transit). I later learned though that my boss ok'd this product for shipment and (to add to the mess) asked our warehousing personnel to change the labels to a DIFFERENT DATE which reflects product that was acceptable (which after reviewing I found that there wasn't even production and therefor no testing available for this date either). I am a person of integrity so I contacted my boss and worded my message in a way that allows them to save face but at the end of the day I will still not let this product go out.
I would just like others thoughts on this and if anyone has had any similar experiences. I generally like the folks that I work with but I can't say for sure how many times I can contradict my boss like this before I'm shown to the door.