“With 85 per cent of companies considering their brand as their most important asset and reputation clearly linked with shareholder performance, it really is down to the failure or success of how managements are perceived post an incident in how well it recovers,” David Edwards, director of food-safety certification company CMi said. “Consumer perception has to be factored in to business thinking these days. Ignore this at your peril.”

He was speaking at the EFSA/FSA Incident Prevention and Horizon Scanning International Workshop. He said research has shown that a catastrophic safety failure can have a significant impact on shareholder value, potentially wiping millions off balance sheet value. But it could have a positive impact - where companies have the right systems in place recovery can see the original value overtaken.

The upside opportunity of good reputation management is even more significant and therefore a legitimate component of business strategy. Research by Oxford Metrica, quoted by Edwards shows that over an extended period companies with high “reputation equity” can outperform the competition by 200 per cent. Figures compiled by Fortune Magazine support these conclusions showing that the 10 most “admired” companies had shareholder values that were 114% better than the 10 least admired over a five-year period. Product integrity and social responsibility being key components of being admired.

To conclude, Edwards stressed that with more and more safety, social and environmental legislation in existence and the rising influence of NGOs, pressure groups and global media there is no place for companies to hide and the need to be seen to be acting responsibly and to be trusted cannot be underestimated.