In the space of a week, two well-known names have pulled products from supermarket shelves. On 9 October, Greencore recalled five chilled products from Tesco and M&S after Salmonella was potentially found in pistachios used as an ingredient. Five days later, Waitrose recalled its 115g Tuna Pâté because the pack carried a use-by date two months too late.
One is a supply chain hazard. The other is a labelling error. Different root causes, but both land in the same place: the technical, quality and operations teams whose job is to catch problems before they reach a shopper's basket.
And this week, the Food Standards Agency said something every food manufacturer should hear. Food safety isn't just a process story. It's a people story.
Neither business has suggested people were the cause, and we're not suggesting it either. Recalls like these are often the system working as it should. But they're a timely reminder of how much rests on the people inside that system.
Speaking at Food Manufacture's Food Safety Briefing on 14 October, the FSA's head of prevention, Tina Potter, made a clear point. Risk rarely arrives as a single event. It builds up from several pressures coming together, and there are warning signs along the way if you know where to look.
The signs she named are worth reading twice: ingredient substitution, fraud and non-compliance, and training failures where staff turnover is high. In her words, that stage is often the last point where a business can still step in and stop an incident before it happens.
She also warned that once things go wrong, consumer trust is the hardest thing to win back, calling confidence "the slowest of the outcomes we can rebuild".
The same briefing featured Roy Kirby, former chief food safety officer at Mondelez, on how technical teams can make sure their voice is heard in the boardroom. That's a telling topic. It says the industry knows its technical people are critical, but isn't always giving them the weight they need.
From where we sit, the FSA has just described the talent challenge in food manufacturing better than most recruitment reports ever have.
The early warning signs Potter talks about don't show up on a dashboard by themselves. They're spotted by people:
When those roles sit empty, or turn over every few months, knowledge walks out of the door. New starters are still learning the site. Training gets squeezed. And the signals that would have been caught early get missed.
That's why we see technical hiring as risk management, not just recruitment. A vacancy in your quality team isn't a gap on an org chart. It's a gap in your defences.
Experienced technical people are some of the hardest to find in our industry, and the best ones are rarely on the market.
You can see it at the very top. Earlier this month, 2 Sisters Food Group appointed Julia Mulholland as technical director for its meals division. It's her third spell with the business, bringing more than 25 years of experience across high-care and low-risk environments. When proven technical leaders are worth bringing back for a third time, it tells you how valuable that depth of knowledge is.
The same pressure runs right through the pipeline:
After decades recruiting in food and drink, we know that a strong technical team isn't built in a hurry when something goes wrong. It's built steadily, through good relationships, long before it's needed.
If you're an employer, a few questions worth asking this week:
If you're a technical or quality professional, your experience has never been more valued. Recalls, tighter regulation and site changes all mean businesses need people who can spot problems early and lead a strong food safety culture. If you've been thinking about your next step, now is a good time to have a conversation.
Is food safety getting the people investment it deserves, or are technical teams being stretched too thin? We'd love to hear your view. Join the conversation on our LinkedIn page.
If you're an employer looking to strengthen your technical, quality or hygiene teams, we'd be happy to talk about the skills you need and where to find them, including the people who aren't actively looking.
If you're a technical professional thinking about what's next, we're always here for a confidential, no-pressure chat.
Call us on 07826 916595, email mail@theovalpartnership.co.uk or browse our latest vacancies.
