Dear all,
I am a Quality manager with almost 10 years experience in the food industry in quality related positions at a company that produces food supplements for B2B customer (private label). The company is in Europe. Just for your information, food supplements are foodstuff according to european regulations and not a medicine.
I need your knowledge and your opinion about a topic. Here is the issue:
A production employee accidentally added sodium ascorbate (0,6%) in a food supplement that normally does not contain any sodium ascorbate in the recipe.
My reaction: We should inform the customer so that they can adjust their labels.
There was a discussion in the company between me, the CMO (who has experience in QM, worked as Quality Manager in the past and is my superior) and the CEO who has no QM experience. They both believe that this is not food fraud because there was no intention it was an accident, because there is no economical motivation behind it, and because in general sodium ascorbate is safe. So they didn´t want to inform the customer.
I was trying to convince them that if they decide not to inform the customer then there is an economical motivation behind it. They are afraid that the customer decides not to buy the product.
At the end, I convinced them to inform the customer.
The problem is that they still believe that they shouldn´t have informed the customer because it is not food fraud.
The CMO with QM experience asked me to read about food fraud because obviously I don´t know what food fraud is. What do you think? What can you advise me? How can I convince them?
Thank you in advance.