Category: Pharmaceutical Industry

Fake product recalls – unlike other claims of so-called “fake news” – are exceedingly rare. But they are not without precedence. Just last year, a car dealership in Washington, D.C., was heavily fined by the Federal Trade Commission for sending fake recall warnings to car owners in the hopes of drumming up more business for the dealership’s repair shop. The dealership sent out bright red mailers that mimicked official recall notices from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

ACConventional wisdom suggests that automation and robotics should make products safer by removing the potential for human error adding more precision to production. But some industries are finding that automation is a double-edged sword. The food industry, in particular, has experienced a string of product recalls whose origins can be traced back to automated systems. Take factory farming, for example. Food Quality & Safety Magazine

PA swift and thorough product recall is the best way to mitigate any legal liability risk from a defective product, removing inventory from the market before problems become pervasive. But in many cases, product defects or dangers aren’t discovered until after harm has occurred and liability cannot be avoided. Product liability laws enable consumers to sue those parties responsible when a product causes property damage, injury or death.

When a consumer’s smartphone spontaneously combusts, the word-of-mouth news spreads to millions within days if not hours. If a certain blood pressure medicine is contaminated with a potentially cancer-causing agent, it could take months before routine testing uncovers the defect, and weeks more before the news and notifications slowly trickle.

Advances in technology tend to be mixed blessings for product recalls. They often introduce new product safety vulnerabilities while, at the same time, may offer new capabilities that improve recall efficacy. The impact of technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, big data, and others on product recalls are slowly unfolding, but emerging patterns give us some sense about how these technologies might affect product safety and recall management in the future.