Fonterra and the government may face an uphill battle over the coming months and years to rebuild confidence in milk products affected by the botulism scare.
The dairy exporter has gone into damage control after it revealed at the weekend a 38-tonne batch of whey was contaminated by a dirty pipe at a factory in the Waikato last year - leading to a recall of baby formula here and overseas.
It has threatened the reputation of the country's export mainstay - $11 billion in dairy products.
Chris Galloway, a senior lecturer in communication at Massey University, says Fonterra is doing some things right, such as chief executive Theo Spierings going to China which accounts for $3.2 billion of its exports.
However, there were some questionable moves, including the at least two-day delay between confirmation of the botulism risk and going public with the news.
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"This (the delay) is not the way to do it. The way to do it is to tell the bad news yourself, which is what they have done, and to tell it quickly.
"In the absence of that speculation naturally arises and the company and the country are going to have to deal with the fallout for some time to come."
The stakes are high, he said.
"If there was the slightest hint of a potential problem for human health they would be justified in acting, even if they don't have all the scientific data at hand," Dr Galloway told NZ Newswire.
The media reaction towards Fonterra has been harsh. In an opinion piece on Tuesday, the Waikato Times states: "Being kept in the dark too long for a third time on a food safety issue is simply not good enough."
The New Zealand Herald lampooned the company in a cartoon and The Otago Daily Times says Fonterra's "phalanx of high-paid executives" appeared not to have learned the lessons of Sanlu in 2008, when six children in China died from melamine poisoning.
Dr Galloway said the reaction was to be expected and the botulism scare raised questions about whether Fonterra had learned from Sanlu and the DCD fertiliser problem earlier this year, both which featured delays in going public.
Fonterra and the government would have to work hand in hand to rebuild the confidence, Dr Galloway said.
However, if a company had an existing good reputation it could be shielded from a crisis, he said, but that could be tainted by the perception of the Sanlu and the DCD affairs.
