Contact Us
Emergency Contacts
If you have an emergency issue with a product out of hours (times detailed below) and need to make a product withdrawal or recall, we have colleagues on hand to help. Please contact our Emergency Incident Centre (EIC) on 0141 647 2000.
You will need to specify if you need a ‘Food Technical’ or a ‘Non-Food Technical’ on call contact, aligned to your product type, who will be able to support you with the issue.
Out of hours contact times:
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After 5pm or before 8am Monday – Friday
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24 hours a day, Saturday & Sunday
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UK Bank Holidays
Contact Number:
0141 647 2000
Data Breach Reporting
Asda requires all suppliers to report data breaches to them within 24 hours of discovery. These can be reported to our Emergency Incident Centre on 0141 647 2000. Only use this number for reporting data breaches. When prompted for a site ID, please quote 8321 (Asda House). Our Emergency Incident Centre will log the incident and escalate this through to our Privacy Team for their attention.
Technical Incident Management (Supplier Facing Policy)
The ASDA technical department must be informed at the earliest opportunity of an issue that affects product safety, legality or quality. This could lead to a product withdrawal or recall from sale. No information must be placed in the public domain without ASDA being first made aware. This relates to any product sold by ASDA.
A Food incident is classified by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) as contamination of food or animal feed in processing, distribution, retail and catering and as a result food may need to be withdrawn or recalled. From an Asda perspective we need to ensure the integrity of our brand and the protection of our customers is maintained.
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Incident |
Definition |
Examples |
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Withdrawal |
when unsafe food is removed from the supply chain, this could be due to quality, legality or safety concerns and potential for reputational damage. Product removed from sale but customers are not informed or requested to return product |
is where a product doesn't meet our high standards or would cause brand reputational damage |
|
Recall |
when unsafe food is removed from the supply chain and consumers are advised to take appropriate action, for example to return or dispose of the unsafe food. Imperative that product is removed from sale and appropriate authorities are informed. Likely to cause harm, injury, illness. |
is where a product presents a risk of harm or injury or doesn’t meet legislation |
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Withdraw to hold
|
must only be used by exception and as a temporary option. The decision to ‘hold’ the product is not an indefinite one |
This can give the business time to ascertain more facts e.g. pending test results. |
For ASDA own brand product ASDA will manage the communication with government departments unless other retailers are involved. In this case then the communication must first be agreed with ASDA before being led by the FBO.
For branded products it is always the FBOs responsibility to communicate with the government departments.
This procedure is in place to ensure ASDA customers remain safe and that prompt contact is made by the FBO to Asda and prompt action is taken by the technical team and documented. Asda reserves the right to withdraw or recall any Asda brand product where they believe there to be a food safety, legality risk or to continue to sell it would be detrimental to the brand integrity.
It is a requirement of supply that, if your site is involved in any product recall, you communicate this with your Asda Technical contact to confirm if the recall affects products supplied to Asda or not. This must be prior to any public notification being released by your business or a third party (e.g. Food Standards Agency (FSA) notification).
During office hours (Monday to Friday 8:00 – 17:00) contact to be made within 1 hour of an issue being identified, even if investigation is ongoing.
Asda branded products – first contact must be via a phone call to the technical manager/technologist responsible for the product – if they are not available then leave a message and follow up with an email. Please watch out for ‘out of office’ replies and contact the technical manager/technologist listed, if an out of office is received. If no one responds within 15 minutes please then contact the Senior Technical Manager and then Senior Director Technical and then Commercial until contact is made.
Branded products – contact Commercial/trader and send an email to Food Safety Compliance <FoodSafetyCompliance@asda.co.uk> until contact and confirmation is made. The decision to withdraw or recall sits with the brand owner and Asda will act on the instruction and only instigate on our systems.
Outside office hours: any time outside of above contact via Emergency Incident Centre (EIC) on 0044 (0)1416-472000 and you will be directed to the technical on call colleague. You must have the following information to hand before making contact;
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Summary of incident
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Company name
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Contact telephone number and email
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Product and WIN including batch/date code information
Asda branded products After making initial contact, the incident log (sent to you by Asda technical) must be completed within 1 hour and returned. This log will then be sent to the relevant stakeholders – category technical manager, senior technical manager and the colleague you have made contact with (if different). An image of the front of the product must be included and this will be used if a withdrawal/recall notice is needed.
The risk assessment template can be found here:
You must have an account and be logged in to view and download.
Following internal discussions further questions may be asked/information requested. This must be shared in a timely manner.
All Recalls must have a root cause analysis conducted and this must be shared with your category technical manager within 1 month. If the FSA requests a root cause analysis they will share their own documentation which will also require completion. This must be reviewed by Asda before being submitted to the FSA.
All withdrawals and recalls will be followed up by unannounced reactive audits.
