On average, $10m is the cost of a recall on a food company. Add this to the fact that recalls have been doubling every year from the 2002-2014 period in the United States, and it should worry any stakeholder in the manufacturing and processing facilities. Yet many of them are surprisingly optimistic about the chance of a recall affecting business, and it's their belief of invincibility that leaves them unprepared to weather a storm when one blows up. When manufacturers take a risk on their customers' health, they take a risk on their business’s health.

It's time to stop thinking of your supply chain as an endless stream of entities, all nicely linked together; it is much more complex than that.

DuPont leads the chemical industry in preparing for a low-carbon economy, according to CDP's latest quarterly sector research report.

The British Health and Safety Executive (HSE) are putting in motion plans that will change Britain's role in world manufacturing, for better or for worse. In its annual report, HSE proudly announced that they had removed 84 per cent of their regulations without compromising on safety. Depending on how you interpret the statistics, this has either made the UK a much stronger player in international trade or has taken the UK two steps backwards.