General Mills Honey Nut Cheerios, Whole Grain Oats, 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 Honey Nut Cheerios, Whole Grain Oats, packaged in the following sizes: 12.25 oz., UPC 16000-27527; 17 oz., UPC 16000-27571; 48 oz., UPC 16000-48665; and 55 oz., UPC 16000-40106
- UPC
- 1600027527
- Reason for recall
- General Mills is recalling several days of production of Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios Cereal because of undeclared wheat.
- Recalling firm
- General Mills, Inc
- Firm location
- Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States
- Classification
- Class II
- Status
- Terminated
- Recall number
- F-0096-2016
- Quantity
- 101,706 cases and 9,269 pallets total
- Distribution
- nationwide and outside the US to include Guam.
- Initiated
- 5 October 2015
- Reported by FDA
- 28 October 2015
- Terminated
- 30 May 2019
- Firm notified by
- Product codes
- Best if Used by Dates: 12JUL2016 LD - 25JUL2016 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. All 2 of them are listed on this page.
- 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 nuts or seeds run a median of 7 months, so this one was longer than usual for its category. Nuts and seeds carry both hazards at once: they are a major allergen in their own right, and as a low-moisture food they hold Salmonella for months without supporting its growth, which is why a nut butter recall can trace to a lot pressed a year earlier.
What this recall was for
Undeclared allergens
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.
The allergens named in this record: wheat, tree nuts.
Filed under nuts and seeds, sauces, dips and condiments and grains, flour and pasta. A product can sit in more than one.
Every product in this recall
The FDA opened 2 enforcement records for this one recall, one per product code. This page carries all of them; the 1 below each have their own page with that product’s lot codes and distribution, and search engines are pointed here for the recall as a whole.
| Reported | Product | Firm | Reason | Class |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-10-28 | General Mills Cheerios, Toasted Whole Grain Oat Cereal, packaged in the following sizes: 12 oz, UPC 16000-48772; 18 oz, UPC 16000-27528 | General Mills, Inc | General Mills is recalling several days of production of Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios Cereal because of undeclared wheat. | Class II |
Other nuts and seeds 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.
Other records from General Mills, Inc
The FDA opens one enforcement record per product code, so several of these are frequently one recall event. 37 other records name this firm.
All 38 records for General Mills, Inc
All 2015 recalls · All FDA food recall data
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.
Early accessRecall 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.