In the absence of any industry guidance, the WSTA Wine and Spirit Technical Committee has developed a set of best practice guidelines on rinser performance testing to help members and their suppliers.

FIVS (global federation representing the alcoholic beverage sector) and Oenoppia (trade body representing suppliers of oenological products) have worked together to provide clarity and guidance to their memberships relating to the type of information that should readily be available for winemaking additives and processing aids for purposes of commercial due diligence and validation of supply chain traceability.

Recent meetings of the Wine and Spirit Technical Committee have discussed the formation of sediment associated with use of CMC in winemaking. The Committee agreed at its meeting in September 2015 to prepare a paper outlining key factors to be aware of when using CMC.

With the consumer becoming increasingly health conscious and the advent of fast reacting social media platforms, every company should have an organised plan for the withdrawal from distribution of a specific product or a given batch of a particular product. To attempt product recalls/withdrawals – in all probability the most traumatic experience for any company involved in the food and drink sector – without such a plan would simply exacerbate the dissipation of resource, the confusion, indeed ALL the usual knock-on effects
of the cause of such problems.

A consumer may complain to a retailer, to the distributor, direct to the producer, to a consumer organisation or to an enforcement authority. All companies are recommended to have in place processes to ensure that customer/consumer product complaints are dealt with promptly and efficiently, and that valid problems are dealt with satisfactorily.