Message Mapping for Foodborne Outbreaks and Product Recalls

An online handbook for US food industries from farm to fork

Now available in hardback at Amazon or Barnes & Noble

This guide offers a step-by-step process for developing and delivering effective risk messages to consumers and other stakeholders during outbreaks of foodborne illness that result in product recalls. The focus is on companies that produce, manufacture, distribute, or serve food products within the United States.

At the heart of this process are three concepts: 

• The principles of high-stress communication, as established by the research of risk communications scholar Vincent T. Covello, as well as its primary tool: the message map, which organizes and simplifies the essential task of delivering effective messages to large groups of upset people. His web site is centerforriskcommunication.org/. 
• Hazard = Risk + Outrage, a model created by risk communications consultant Peter M. Sandman to help clients deal more effectively with large groups of upset people, as well as his principles, methods, and strategies of outrage management. You can learn more at his website, psandman.com.
• Best practices for risk communication, as outlined by Timothy L. Sellnow, Robert R. Ulmer, Matthew W. Seeger, and Robert S. Littlefield in their book Effective Risk Communication: A Message-Centered Approach (2009), a volume in Springer Science+Business Media’s Food Microbiology and Food Safety series.

The handbook is supplemented with:

• Templates for message maps designed specifically for use during outbreaks of foodborne illness and the product recalls that often follow.
• Handouts and slide decks.
• Case studies that help to demonstrate the handbook’s core concepts in the context of an actual foodborne outbreak followed by a product recall.
• Case briefs that illustrate the basics of message mapping in the context of high-stress communication during foodborne outbreaks.

You will find links to these downloadable supplements in the sidebar to the left.

The handbook is designed to help train your company’s crisis response team to communicate clearly with angry or upset stakeholders. It also serves as a field guide for use during actual outbreaks and recalls, when tempers run high and the resulting stress can interfere with our ability to think clearly and strategically.

— Rusty Cawley, APR

Table of contents

Introduction: Why you need this handbook

Part I: High-Stress Communication for Foodborne Outbreaks and Recalls

• Section 1: Fundamentals of high-stress communication
• Section 2: Understanding the foodborne risk controversy
• Section 3: Understanding stakeholder outrage
• Section 4: Stakeholder outrage and the foodborne risk controversy
• Section 5: The primary strategy — acknowledge and improve
• Section 6: How to deliver three types of news — the bad, the good, and the uncertain
• Section 7: How to communicate effectively through the news media
• Section 8: Understanding what outraged stakeholders need from you
• Section 9: Nine best practices for communicating risk to stakeholders
• Section 10: Summary of important concepts from Part I

 Part II: Message Mapping for Foodborne Outbreaks and Recalls

• Section 11: Building message maps for foodborne outbreaks
• Section 12: Working with the message map templates
• Section 13: Composing the preamble
• Section 14: Delivering risk messages to stakeholders
• Sources for Parts I and II

Part III: Case Studies in Message Mapping for Foodborne Outbreaks and Recalls 

• The Blue Bell listeriosis outbreak of 2010-2015 and recall of 2015
• The I.M. Healthy SoyNut Butter E. coli 0:157 outbreak and recall of 2017
• The Cadbury Schweppes salmonella outbreak and chocolate recall of 2006
• NEW: The Townsend Farms Hepatitis A outbreak and recall of 2013