Trader Joes, Veggie Flaxseed Tortilla Chips, Net Wt. 12oz. (340g), Distributed and Sold…
R.W.Garcia Co., Inc. recalled this product and the FDA reported the enforcement action on 19 October 2016 as Class II. The recall was initiated by the firm. Foreign material (metal fragments) detected in raw material.
The record
Every field below is published by the FDA in the openFDA food enforcement database. Check the FDA notice before acting on any recall: this page is a reading of the public record, not a substitute for it.
Product
Trader Joes, Veggie Flaxseed Tortilla Chips, Net Wt. 12oz. (340g), Distributed and Sold by Trader Joes, Monrovia, CA 91014.
Reason for recall
Foreign material (metal fragments) detected in raw material.
Item #4020, PO numbers: 78405399, 78208540, 78223406, 78223448, 78223452 and 79296976, Date codes: 11/30/2016 and 12/01/2016.
Reading this record
Five things about this record are not in the record itself, and each one changes how it should be read.
Class II means the FDA judged a remote probability of serious harm, or a probability of temporary or medically reversible harm. The class is assigned by an agency health hazard evaluation under 21 CFR 7.41, not by the firm.
The firm started this recall itself. Most FDA food recalls are voluntary, and a recall is a food safety plan working rather than failing. The circumstances in which the agency asks for one instead are set out in 21 CFR 7.45.
This is one of 10 records covering the same recall event. The FDA opens one enforcement record per product code, so a recall of a product line appears here many times. Counting these records as 10 separate recalls, which almost every published figure does, overstates it by a factor of 10. Every product code in this event is listed together on the record that covers the whole recall, which is the page a search engine is pointed to for all 10 of them.
The recall ran for 11 months, from 25 September 2016 to termination on 31 August 2017. Termination means the agency judged that all reasonable effort had been made, under 21 CFR 7.55, and it says nothing about whether product remained in circulation.
The FDA published the enforcement report 3 weeks after the firm began the recall.
Recalls of a bakery product run a median of 6 months, so this one was longer than usual for its category. Bakery is overwhelmingly an allergen category rather than a pathogen one: baking is a kill step, but a bakery runs many recipes down shared lines, so the failure that recalls a bakery product is usually a label or a changeover.
A foreign material recall means something that is not food was found in food: metal, plastic, glass, wood or insect matter, usually shed by equipment during processing.
A preventive controls plan covers foreign material under the clauses below. This is where the control belongs, not a finding against any firm named on this page: a recall record states a reason, and most of these recalls were initiated by the firm itself.
21 CFR 117.40
Equipment and utensils: plant equipment designed and maintained so it cannot contaminate food with lubricants, fuel, metal fragments or contaminated water.
21 CFR 117.80(c)
Manufacturing operations: the measures that protect food from contamination during processing, including the effective ones against metal and other extraneous material.
21 CFR 117.150
Corrective actions: what a facility does when a preventive control was not properly implemented, including identifying and correcting the problem and evaluating the food for safety.
These are the closest records in the corpus: the same kind of food, recalled for a hazard this record also names. Unlike the firm’s own records below, they come from different companies, which is what makes them a pattern rather than a history.
Metal fragments in bread. The firm discovered metal fragments in various bread products. They determined the cause to be roasted tomatoes provided by one of their ingredient suppliers.
Downstream recall. Product contains arrowroot flour ingredient that was voluntarily recalled by the supplier due to potential contamination of soft kraft paper/plastic bag pieces.
21 CFR 117.40 is the clause behind this recall, and it is one somebody has to produce evidence for at their next audit. Krolda maps supplier documents to the clause they satisfy in FSSC 22000, IFS Food and 21 CFR 117, and routes the corrective action when the evidence is missing.
Recall records come from the openFDA food enforcement API, published by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the public domain. Krolda adds the hazard classification and the clause mapping; neither is an FDA determination. Always check the FDA notice before acting on a recall.
