BulletProofBlog the blog on crisis communications

With Melamine - the toxin at the root of last year's pet food adulteration - back in the news, the retailers and manufacturers that will be forced to deal with just the latest China-related product safety scare should take a page from a crisis playbook classic. This week marks the 26th anniversary of the Tylenol tampering crisis. To this day, the famous 1982 incident is presented as the successful case study in how corporations should handle ... READ MORE

With the grandeur and pageantry of the Beijing Games in the rearview mirror, observers are once again fearing it's back to business as usual in China. The U.S. State Department is blasting the nation's lack of progress on human rights and environmental issues are once again in the news. Perhaps most disturbing for consumers, yet another product safety crisis of epic proportions is shaking the world's confidence in China's products. The news that four infants have ... READ MORE

Yesterday, the Yale School of Medicine released a study that once again raises questions about the safety of a chemical commonly found in everyday plastics.   The potential dangers associated with Bisphenol A, or BPA, have long been the subject of debate among regulators, scientists, consumer groups, and the manufacturers that produce nearly 7 billion pounds of BPA each year. But with the revelation that exposure to EPA-accepted levels of the chemical has caused brain function and ... READ MORE

Week after week the news media report on the latest medical studies that identify some new and unexpected risk to our health. Do cell phones cause brain tumors? Do overhead power lines lead to childhood leukemia? Does exposure to common chemicals increase the risk of breast cancer? We see the scary headlines, but few of us notice the inevitable follow-up stories that put these newly apprehended risks into perspective and often debunk the initial reports altogether. A ... READ MORE

Say it ain't so! Whole Foods Market, the top U.S. organic foods retailer, has announced a recall of all the fresh ground beef it sold between June 2 and August 6 due to potential E. coli contamination. This significant event threatens to undermine the promise of the Whole Foods brand - that is, consumers may pay more for its products but can expect food that is fresher, healthier, and safer in return. Whole Foods said the ... READ MORE

They say that three's the charm. Not for Australia's Qantas Airways. Three widely reported safety incidents in as many weeks have passengers and Qantas employees concerned and Australian safety authorities on alert. Qantas is actually among the world's safest air carriers, with not a single fatal accident in almost 90 years of commercial operation. But that was yesterday. Now, with three emergency landings one after another putting Qantas in the news, outgoing CEO Geoff Dixon admits ... READ MORE

With serious consumer-product recalls occurring in the United States seemingly every day, Congress is passing stricter regulations on everything from children's toys to grandma's walker, along with the toughest penalties in history for companies that violate them. The House and Senate are poised to approve the bill and President Bush is expected to quickly sign it. The measure bans lead in toys and requires the Consumer Product Safety Commission to hire more workers. The CPSC will ... READ MORE

China's nudge to Sudan on seeking peace in Darfur is remarkable from several political and diplomatic perspectives. Its public airing, however, is a major communications initiative for China, which seems to be leveraging the power of the global media more and more ahead of the Summer Olympics. Operating for decades under a strict non-intervention philosophy, China has recently spoken out on several international issues that it previously only addressed in diplomatic forums such as the UN. ... READ MORE

Warnings about a possible connection between heavy cell phone use and malignant brain tumors are nothing new. They have re-surfaced so many times over the years that they have achieved urban legend status. With Senator Ted Kennedy's recent brain cancer diagnosis, those scare stories are attracting fresh attention. There is no credible scientific evidence linking cell phone use to anything worse than rude behavior in restaurants. But that shouldn't give anyone in the cell phone business ... READ MORE

For the third time in four years, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of legal rights for the Guantanamo detainees, this time specifying absolutely that they have the right to challenge their imprisonment in U.S. courts. We can only hope that this time the Bush administration honors the rule of law and allows the prisoners, some of whom have been held for more than six years without a hearing or a trial, access ... READ MORE