General Mills Cheerios, Toasted Whole Grain Oat Cereal, packaged in the following sizes…
General Mills, Inc recalled this product and the FDA reported the enforcement action on 28 October 2015 as Class II. The recall was initiated by the firm. General Mills is recalling several days of production of Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios Cereal because of undeclared wheat.
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
General Mills Cheerios, Toasted Whole Grain Oat Cereal, packaged in the following sizes: 12 oz, UPC 16000-48772; 18 oz, UPC 16000-27528
UPC
1600048772
Reason for recall
General Mills is recalling several days of production of Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios Cereal because of undeclared wheat.
Better if Used by Dates: 14JUL2016 LD - 17JUL2016 LD
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 2 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 2 separate recalls, which almost every published figure does, overstates it by a factor of 2. 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 2 of them.
The recall ran for 3.6 years, from 5 October 2015 to termination on 30 May 2019. 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 grain, flour or pasta product run a median of 6 months, so this one was longer than usual for its category. Flour is a raw agricultural product that consumers treat as though it were cooked, which is the whole reason raw flour recalls exist: nothing in milling is a kill step, and the hazard only appears when somebody eats the dough.
An undeclared allergen recall means a food contained one of the major allergens and the label did not say so, either because the wrong label was applied or because an ingredient carried an allergen nobody traced.
A preventive controls plan covers an undeclared allergen 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 117.135(c)(2)
Food allergen controls: the written preventive controls that keep an allergen out of a food it does not belong in, and that get the allergens present onto the label.
21 CFR 101.4
Ingredient declaration: every ingredient listed by its common name, in descending order of predominance, on the label of a packaged food.
21 CFR 117 subpart G
Supply-chain programme: the approval and verification a receiving facility runs on a supplier when the hazard is controlled before the ingredient arrives.
Other grains, flour and pasta recalls for the same reason
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.
Soba sauce packet, which contains bonito, sardine, and mackerel (fish), was packed into Sura Tanmen Hot and Sour Flavor ramen noodle package kit, but fish species are not declared on finished product label.
Chocolate chip cookie dough larabars which contain cashews were incorrectly packaged in peanut butter cookie larabars boxes. The individual labeling on the chocolate chip cookie dough larabars is correct despite being in the wrong boxes.
Three flavors of Betty Crocker cake mix are being recalled by General Mills because of possible contamination with E. coli O121 associated with Gold Medal Flour recall.
21 CFR 117.135(c)(2) 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.
