“At various times in a person’s career you find yourself in a situation you’d rather not be in but you have to front up and deal with things as best you can,” former New Zealand Milk Products managing director Gary Romano says.
He resigned amid the product recall and furore over the crisis shortly before the fact it was indeed a false positive came to light. He won’t be drawn on why he resigned or the detailed circumstances around the move but said he was relieved when the false positive was declared some weeks later.
It was more a sense of relief for consumers, the mums and dads, than for himself or the company, he said.
He had deep suspicions that test results stating botulinum was present weren’t right, but there had been no alternative than to take the action Fonterra had when confronted with the information at hand.
Any chance of contamination had to be fronted up to.
“In the end I’d much prefer having a false alarm than the alternative,” he said. “Imagine if we didn’t say anything and heaven forbid a child got to be affected – that’s the last place you want to go.”
Romano recalled that his first reaction was one of shock and surprise but very quickly his thoughts turned to the question, “What’s the right thing to do here?”.
The company took the action it did based on what it saw as appropriate for “who we were and what we stood for,” he said.
It wanted to be transparent and honest, he said.
Although retail brands normally front product recalls, Fonterra took the lead because it was deemed by those in the co-op to be the right thing to do.
“It was always going to be difficult to communicate with consumers when we didn’t have all the information at the start,” he said.
“A lot of that information lay with our customers.”
Romano said Fonterra’s systems had swung into action quickly and by the time he was out in the spotlight teams of people were already working to help track down product, work out what had happened and investigate the science further.
“A lot of people worked tirelessly behind the scenes. In the end I was the guy holding the microphone.”
Television viewers here and overseas saw a drawn, stressed-looking Romano face the media day after day until chief executive, Theo Spierings, returned from Europe via China.
Criticism has been levelled at Fonterra’s chairman, John Wilson, for not standing shoulder to shoulder with Romano at the time. Wilson defended the action as appropriate, saying that appearing in the early stages would look as though the co-op’s governors didn’t have faith in management’s ability to handle the situation.
Romano is nothing but supportive of the Fonterra’s board and the co-op’s actions.
He commended the board in setting up the independent inquiry lead by Jack Hodder QC of Chapman Tripp and said he fully agreed with the report’s findings.
“I’ve got no disagreement with any of its recommendations – it was a good piece of work and Fonterra is acting on it.
“In terms of the level of transparency and taking it seriously and moving on to improve the business, I think it was a good job.”
Fonterra was going on to be a better, stronger company as a result of following the recommendations, he said.
Romano took up his new position with Shanghai Pengxin on April 1, a date not lost on his sense of humour.
That drawn, worried look is gone, replaced with enthusiasm for his new role. While he quips that he’s yesterday’s news, that new role’s sure to see him featuring again albeit for less negative reasons.
