Abstract: A set of consumers of a producer-consumer system includes a main consumer subset and a backstop consumer subset. A plurality of updates to message processing information are deployed to the set of consumers. Each update of the plurality of updates is first deployed to the backstop consumer sub-set and is subsequently deployed to the main consumer subset. The main consumer subset may obtain messages from producers and attempt to process the messages. By contrast, the backstop consumer subset may obtain messages only after a failed processing attempt by the main consumers. Upon obtaining a message, a main consumer may process the message successfully or may fail processing and provide the message for processing by a backstop consumer, which may be more up to date than the main consumer.