Timeline questions must wait

Asked at a press conference yesterday why Fonterra did not put a crisis plan in place when they had reason to retest the whey in March, Romano said "at that point there was no belief by anyone that this was going to lead to concern for the consumers".

However he said they did not want to comment further on timelines and decisions made at this stage.

"There will be a time when we go through the timeline," he said. "That timeline will be subject to our own internal review, and our expectation is that MPI will have oversight of that review. I don't want to pre-empt what is happening.

"What I would really like is for science to take over here and explain what we did when and why. There's a process for that, you can be assured there will be a process not only internally, but there will be external oversight. It's premature to ask about which tests were done when and why."

He said the focus right now was an operational one. "It is very much about getting information out to our customers, so they can do their job in getting product off the shelf. That's out immediate focus."

Earlier he said Fonterra will be as transparent and open as it could, and move at speed. "Sometimes that speed means we don't have all the complete information with us, but we are acting transparently, we are moving at speed and we are trying to do what is best for consumers."