A dog's garden of versus

As I was writing yesterday’s post about the “non-recall recall” by Chobani of some of its Greek yogurt, I wondered briefly how this all started. Who actually took the time to explore, research, and investigate this, and then pulled it together for the rest of us? Watching more of the Twitter stream today, there was the answer at 9:17 am from John Sowell, self-described as a public safety reporter at the Idaho Statesman:

John Sowell ‏@IDS_Sowell
Six days after I broke the story that stores removed Chobani yogurt from shelves, the company admits to a recall.

His story, Chobani yogurt removed from store shelves, was published on September 1st (Sunday).

He had spent the previous day tracing the problem back: “The first three complaints questioning yogurt quality were posted Aug. 22 on Chobani’s Facebook page.” That was ten (10) days prior to his published story, and there were other complaints subsequent to those first three from which he quoted.

I only started following all this on Wednesday afternoon, but at that time Chobani was in quasi-denial, for example, in this reply: “@foodscitech No recall here!” A search on Twitter for the combination @Chobani and the phrase “no recall here” yields about 80 tweets on September 4th (Wednesday) that begin with that exclamatory phrase. The last one is at 6:00 pm, which presumably is the demarcation between unreal (“No recall here!”) and real (Oooops, well maybe we should issue just a little one — my words, not Chobani’s).

Going farther back, the denial is there still earlier — two tweets on the 3rd, one on the 2nd, and one on the 1st. Here is that very first one on Sunday (the 1st) at 11:01 pm:

@tcruzmo No recall here. For more information check out our blog post. We’re glad you got in touch with us! http://cho.ba/19Zp0vD

It does make you wonder if @tcruzmo had read the Idaho Statesman earlier in the day, doesn’t it? [Update on September 7th: Alas, nothing that dramatic. @tcruzmo subsequently indicated receipt on the 1st of an email mentioning a "Class III recall."]

At the end of that same week (August 30th), Spartan Stores of Grand Rapids, MI, added a list of about 50 Chobani products to the “Recent Recalls” page on the websites of all six of its supermarket brands — D&W Fresh Market, Family Fare, Glen’s Fresh Market, Glen’s Market, ValuLand, VG’s Fresh Market, and VG’s Grocery, numbering collectively nearly 100 stores. As an example, here is the page for D&W Fresh Market (10 stores). The list is followed by an explanatory paragraph that begins with this sentence:

Chobani has issued a voluntary product withdrawal of Chobani products manufactured at the Twin Falls, Idaho facility due to premature swelling or bloating.

As an aside, I can’t help asking this irreverent question: Would there be some timing for or version of “swelling or bloating” that would not be “premature” and hence by implication could be deemed acceptable?…

Now return to mid-week and, according to Candace Choi’s article on Thursday in the Huffington Post, “the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that it was in talks with the company about the matter.” That would be September 4th, at the height of the “No recall here!” mantra. On Thursday morning, she (@candacechoi) tweeted that “Chobani CEO tells me it was company’s decision to enact a recall. But did not know if FDA first reached out to company or vice versa.”

For the record, here is the FDA’s posting of Chobani’s “Recall — Firm Press Release,” dated September 5 [Thursday] and entitled “Chobani, Inc. Voluntarily Recalls Greek Yogurt Because of Product Concerns.” So now there is a definitive answer to the rhetorical question on Chobani’s website, “What is real?”: the recall.

At least two lawyers who were watching and tweeting weighed in, hinting (or more) at legal issues. Michele Simon (‏@MicheleRSimon) tweeted “lawyers at work (being one I can smell it). Prob worried about legal implications of ‘recall’ http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm165546.htm”; and Bill Marler offered 140+ characters on his blog: Chobani, here is the difference between a Recall and a Withdrawal and some Questions, which begins with the phrase “According to the FDA….”

They are understandably seeing the world through law-colored glasses, and I don’t doubt the role, however much behind-the-scenes, of the FDA. But, as I said in my previous post, this was arguably the world’s first crowdsourced recall (at least by that name). It is very unlikely that all of this would have happened on the timescale that it did without the visible, strident, sustained commentary — and embarrassment for Chobani — on Twitter and Facebook (unless there had been some serious public health impact to speed up the result, which thankfully seems to have been absent).

For clarity and emphasis, here is a recap of that timescale:
• August 22, first customer comments or complaints on Facebook;
• August 30, Spartan Stores announce Chobani’s “voluntary product withdrawal”
• September 1, John Sowell’s story in the Idaho Statesman
• September 1, first tweet using “recall” re: Chobani
• September 4, revelation of FDA “in talks” with Chobani
• September 4, cessation of “No recall here!” mantra
• September 5, press release from Chobani on voluntary recall

To put the Twitter stream in perspective, here it is for the past month with data for “Chobani” (orange) and “Chobani recall” (blue) taken earlier today from Topsy (but note that the right-hand most datapoint is for the 5th, not the 6th):

[click on the image above for a larger version]

As I said in a tweet earlier today, the “pressure” had been building since Monday, and not just in Chobani’s cups. Nothing to do with the FDA, though we should be glad they were also active. But the larger implication is clear: In the social media era, if you manufacture things we put in or on our bodies, it would behoove you to pay real-time, fine-grained attention to your customers, as well as long-term attention to rules and regulations. Otherwise, you are liable to be awarded a de facto crowdsourced recall (or similar penalty) instead of being able to wait for or even avoid a de jure one.

During the past 24-36 hours, the major social media sites have been lit up by the news that Chobani, one of the major manufacturers of Greek yogurt, had quietly asked retailers last week to remove some of its products from grocery store shelves because of a problem with mold — actually a non-problem in their early recounting — in “less than 5% of its total production.”

I learned of this yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon when I came home with a four-pack of my favorite, the 3.5-oz Raspberry + Chocolate Chips. And then my wife noticed the “bloating” of the unopened-yet-unexploded containers….

Charming. That sent me searching on Google and then Twitter. Here are a few links to get you started, on the off chance that you are reading this for some other reason:

• From the Huffington Post: Chobani Pulls ‘Fizzy,’ ‘Swelling’ Yogurt Off Shelves (09/03/13, 6:43 PM);
• From a real-time Twitter search: “Chobani recall”;
• From the Social Analytics page of Topsy: a graph of tweets/day (which I suspect is running way behind the real-time stream, at least as I am writing); and
• From a Google search: “Chobani recall” (556,000 hits at time of writing).

The tweets are predictably all over the map, from supportive to scathing. Most people have been concerned to alert their friends and followers; a few have had “Ah ha!” moments as they suddenly understood an unusual taste or an exploded container or some sickness. So far, there are thankfully no reports of serious illness, though the verdict may still be out for those who tweeted things like, “Great, I literally just ate a cup of this!”

Then there were those of us who wondered why the persistent claim from @Chobani of “No recall here!” hadn’t already turned into a for-real recall. Ironic aside: Take a look at their website and the occurrence of that one little word “real,” including their tag line “Go Real” and the prominent question “What Is Real?” Apparently not the “recall.”

I tweeted this on Wednesday at 3:47 pm:

@chobani keeps repeating the mantra, “No recall here!” Really? If not, maybe it should be!!! pic.twitter.com/PZ7Zn1GqQP

And then, with the intent of a humorous jab, this at 3:53 pm:

Multi-choice quiz for @Chobani: (a) it’s a recall; (b) it’s a PR disaster; (c) both (a) & (b); (d) none of the above except (c).

Now, on Thursday morning, the reports and tweets seem to indicate that, with the FDA looking into the situation, Chobani has decided that, uh, maybe there should be a real recall after all. So this will play itself out somehow, refunds/coupons will be emailed, and we will move on to fretting — and tweeting — about other crises. Hopefully, we can all look back in a few weeks and be thankful that no one became seriously ill.

Notwithstanding the opportunistic tweet last night from @YoplaitGreek — “Now’s the time to try NEW delicious Yoplait Greek” — most of us, including me, will be thankful if Chobani itself survives. But I think there will be another legacy that seems to have gone unnoticed thus far. Here it is in a nutshell from last night at 8:32 pm:

@Chobani – “No recall here!” Sorry, but word weaseling aside, you have been awarded the world’s first crowdsourced recall. Congrats!

Before I sent it, I searched for the phrase “crowdsourced recall” on Google. Nada. So while there may have been other product “incidents” since the emergence of social media that could be retrospectively labelled with this phrase, it appears that none have been. Until now.

So congratulations to Chobani indeed. (And Yoplait, don’t get too smug. You could be next.) But especially, congratulations to all the Twitter and Facebook users who made this happen.