Our blog could sometimes be accused of being a little UK-centric so, in an attempt to redress any imbalance, we thought we would take a little look at some data from the US!
For some years now, Stericycle have produced detailed quarterly reports on product recalls in the US. Aggregating data from these reports over the last five years yields the following graph:
The (mostly) reassuring message from the graph seems to be that, just like in the UK, the numbers go up and down from year to year but there is no meaningful trend. Whilst it would be foolhardy to read too much into the slight downward slope; there is certainly nothing to suggest a significant growth in recalls over recent years. Nevertheless the scale of some of these recalls, particularly some of the recent high-profile automotive recalls, serves as a powerful reminder of the need to plan, train and exercise for these scenarios.
