Empirical Labs Building Health Thyroid; 90 Capsules Dietary Supplement
Empirical Laboratories, Incorporated recalled this product and the FDA reported the enforcement action on 20 November 2013 as Class II. The recall was initiated by the firm. Empirical Labs is recalling certain lots of dietary supplements due to potential for adulteration with chloramphenicol.
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
Empirical Labs Building Health Thyroid; 90 Capsules Dietary Supplement
Reason for recall
Empirical Labs is recalling certain lots of dietary supplements due to potential for adulteration with chloramphenicol.
Distributed to ID, MN, and SC. Foreign distribution to Sweden. No military/govt/VA consignees.
Initiated
21 October 2013
Reported by FDA
20 November 2013
Terminated
24 March 2014
Firm notified by
Two or more of the following: Email, Fax, Letter, Press Release, Telephone, Visit
Product codes
Lots: 3071708
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 13 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 13 separate recalls, which almost every published figure does, overstates it by a factor of 13. 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 13 of them.
The recall ran for 5 months, from 21 October 2013 to termination on 24 March 2014. 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 distribution pattern names 1 state, and the FDA published the enforcement report 4 weeks after the firm began the recall.
Recalls of a dietary supplement run a median of 15 months, so this one was shorter than usual for its category. Dietary supplements are regulated under their own good manufacturing practice rule, 21 CFR part 111, and they are the only food category where the dominant recall reason is an ingredient that was never declared because it is a pharmaceutical.
An unapproved ingredient recall means a product contained a substance not permitted in food, most often an undisclosed pharmaceutical active found in a dietary supplement.
A preventive controls plan covers an unapproved ingredient 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 111
Dietary supplement CGMP: the identity, purity, strength and composition specifications a supplement manufacturer sets and verifies for every component and finished batch.
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 dietary supplements 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.
21 CFR 111 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.
