Unilever Israel CEO Anat Gabriel has been explaining why the company concealed the existence of salmonella in Telma's cornflakes and delipecan cereals, which was discovered in the company's production line two weeks ago.
She told Channel 2, "Perhaps we should have behaved differently. In retrospect we could have given a different answer when first contacted but it's easy to be smart in hindsight. When journalists spoke to us yesterday, we said that there was a fault when checking our quality assurance system and we had discovered problems and that there was a problem in the factory."
"We didn't want to sow panic among the public and talk about contamination," explained Gabriel about the decision to deny any problem in the products. "By the evening we had put out a more detailed announcement."
Unilever Israel is the country's largest manufacturer of cereals with a 56% market share, well ahead of Nestle with 26%. By law, companies in Israel must make real time reports to the Ministry of Health about any problems and announce an immediate recall from the stores. However, Unilever Israel insists it was not required to make any notification because the contaminated products never left the factory or reached the stores.
A source at the Ministry of Health, nevertheless, told "Globes" that Unilever Israel had shot itself in the foot by not informing the Ministry because then the Ministry could have backed up Unilever Israel. As it turned out the Ministry of Health learned about the incident from the media.
Unilever Israel insists that the thousands of boxed of cornflakes and delipecan that were contaminated were immediately quarantined into a separate warehouse and destroyed. Unilever Israel says that the global parent company was immediately informed on the matter.
Gabriel also sent an email to angry retailers yesterday saying that production lines were working full out to make up for shortages of Unilever products. She wrote, "All the company's products without exception including Telma's breakfast cereals are completely safe for use and there are no concerns regarding their consumption."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 29, 2016
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