What to Do During a Food Recall in NZ (Step-by-Step)

In 2024, NZ Food Safety coordinated 88 consumer-level food recalls across New Zealand, up 25% from the previous year. That number keeps climbing. Some of those recalls were straightforward. Others were chaotic, expensive, and damaging to the businesses involved.

The difference between a recall that goes smoothly and one that turns into a crisis almost always comes down to preparation. If you’ve practised with a mock recall, the real thing is stressful but manageable. If you haven’t, you’re figuring out your traceability system under the worst possible conditions.

This guide covers what actually happens during a real food recall in New Zealand, step by step.

Recent NZ Food Recalls: What Actually Happened

Understanding the process is easier with real examples. Here are three NZ recalls that show how different situations play out:

Foodstuffs South Island (2025): Failed to remove 39 tubs of recalled hummus from shelves during a major Salmonella-risk recall affecting 82,740 units. Fined $39,000. The recall itself was triggered by contaminated tahini from a supplier. Foodstuffs’ failure was in execution, not detection.

New Zealand Sugar Company / Chelsea Sugar (2025): Imported sugar from Australia became contaminated with lead during shipping. Despite positive test results on 7 October 2021, production continued and 971 tonnes reached the market before a consumer recall was issued on 4 November. Fine: $149,500. Total costs including lost sales and compensation: $3.4 million. The delay between detection and action turned a manageable situation into a crisis.

Hellers Ltd (2019): Cheese Sizzlers sausages were packaged as Original Sizzlers without listing cheese/milk on the label. Three children had allergic reactions, one requiring hospital treatment. Fine: $39,375 plus $5,000 to each victim. This was one of the first prosecutions under the tougher Food Act 2014 penalty provisions.

In each case, the cost of the recall far exceeded what prevention or faster action would have cost.

Who Runs Food Recalls in New Zealand?

NZ Food Safety, which sits within the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), coordinates all food recalls at the national level. They maintain the public recalls register and work with businesses to manage the process.

You, as the food business, are responsible for initiating the recall and carrying it out. NZ Food Safety’s role is to oversee, coordinate, and make sure the public gets informed when needed.

There are two levels of recall:

• Trade-level recall. The product is retrieved from distributors, retailers, or food service businesses, but hasn’t reached consumers or can be identified before sale.
• Consumer-level recall. The product has reached consumers and a public notice is required. This is the more serious (and more common) type, accounting for all 88 of those 2024 recalls.

Step 1: Identify the Problem

Recalls get triggered in several ways. A customer complaint, a failed lab test, a supplier notification, or sometimes your own internal checks pick something up. The Foodstuffs hummus recall started with a supplier notification about undeclared allergens. The Chelsea Sugar contamination was identified through internal quality testing.

Whatever the trigger, once you have reasonable grounds to believe a product is unsafe or unsuitable, the clock starts.

Step 2: Notify NZ Food Safety

You must notify NZ Food Safety within 24 hours of becoming aware that a recall may be necessary. Don’t wait until you’ve figured everything out. Early notification is a legal requirement, and NZ Food Safety would rather hear from you early with incomplete information than late with a polished report.

Contact them through the MPI recall team. They will assign a coordinator to work with you through the process.

At notification, you’ll need to provide:

• Your business details and contact person
• The product name, brand, and description
• Batch or lot numbers affected
• The nature of the hazard (microbial contamination, allergen, foreign matter, chemical, etc.)
• What distribution has occurred so far
• What actions you’ve already taken

Step 3: Trace the Affected Product

This is where your traceability system either proves its worth or falls apart. You need to answer two questions quickly:

Where did the affected ingredients come from? Trace back to your suppliers. Identify the specific batches of incoming materials that are linked to the problem.

Where did the finished product go? Trace forward to every customer, distributor, or retailer who received the affected batches. You need names, quantities, delivery dates, and contact details.

MPI’s expectation is that you can complete a trace within four hours during business hours. If your records are scattered across invoices, delivery dockets, and spreadsheets in different folders, four hours will not be enough.

This is the exact scenario that mock recalls are designed to prepare you for. If you’ve been running annual mock recalls (as required since July 2023), you’ll already know whether your traceability holds up under pressure.

Step 4: Stop the Bleeding

While tracing is underway, take immediate action to prevent more affected product from reaching consumers:

• Stop production of the affected product if the issue is ongoing
• Quarantine any remaining stock in your facility
• Notify your direct customers (distributors, retailers, food service) to hold or pull the product
• Segregate affected stock clearly so it doesn’t accidentally get shipped or sold

Document every action you take, with timestamps. Your corrective action records for a recall need to be thorough.

Step 5: Public Communication (Consumer-Level Recalls)

For consumer-level recalls, NZ Food Safety will publish a recall notice on the MPI website and through media channels. You’ll work with them on the wording.

The recall notice will include:

• Product name, brand, pack size, and batch numbers
• A clear description of the problem and the risk
• What consumers should do (return to store, dispose of product, seek medical advice if symptoms occur)
• A photo of the product and its label

You may also need to communicate directly with your customers. Be factual, be clear, and don’t downplay the risk. Businesses that communicate honestly during a recall generally recover their reputation faster than those that minimise or delay.

Step 6: Recover or Dispose of Product

Work with your customers to retrieve affected product from shelves, warehouses, and distribution centres. Track what comes back. You need to account for as much of the affected product as possible.

Recovered product must be clearly identified, segregated, and either destroyed or reworked under appropriate controls, depending on the nature of the hazard and NZ Food Safety’s directions.

Step 7: Close Out and Review

Once the recall is complete, NZ Food Safety will formally close it. But your work isn’t finished.

Conduct a thorough review:

• Root cause. What actually caused the problem? Not just the immediate trigger, but the underlying system failure.
• Traceability gaps. Were there points where you couldn’t trace product quickly enough?
• Communication. Did you reach all affected customers promptly?
• Prevention. What changes will you make to stop this from happening again?

Document all of this. Your verifier will want to see it at your next verification visit, and it becomes part of your continuous improvement record.

Building a Recall-Ready Business

The businesses that handle recalls well share a few things in common:

Their traceability works. They can link incoming ingredients to finished products to customers, and they can do it fast. Not in theory, but in practice, because they’ve tested it.

Their contact lists are current. When they need to call every customer who received a batch, the phone numbers actually work and the contact names are up to date.

Their staff know the process. At least one person (ideally more than one) knows what to do if a recall is triggered, who to call at MPI, and where the records are.

They practise. Annual mock recalls aren’t just a compliance checkbox. They’re the difference between a four-hour trace and a four-day scramble.

If you’re still running traceability on paper or disconnected spreadsheets, a recall will expose every gap in your system at the worst possible time. The Template FCP App connects your batch records, supplier information, and customer dispatch data so that tracing is a matter of minutes, not hours. For manufacturers and processors who need traceability built into a more complex operation, our Custom FCP / RMP App can help.

Nobody wants to go through a real recall. But if it happens, being prepared is the only thing that makes it manageable.