ProThera, Inc. recalled this product and the FDA reported the enforcement action on 27 November 2013 as Class II. The recall was initiated by the firm. Firm was notified by supplier of the enzyme Xylanase that it was contaminated 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.
US and Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea , Spain
Initiated
6 November 2013
Reported by FDA
27 November 2013
Terminated
16 July 2014
Firm notified by
Letter
Product codes
Lot B3222, product code DTX
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 8 months, from 6 November 2013 to termination on 16 July 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 FDA published the enforcement report 3 weeks after the firm began the recall.
Recalls of fresh produce run a median of 7 months, so this one was about typical for its category. Fresh produce is the category where contamination arrives before the facility does: irrigation water, soil amendments and field workers are the routes, and nothing downstream of the farm is a kill step for a product eaten raw.
These are the closest records in the corpus: the same kind of food. Unlike the firm’s own records below, they come from different companies, which is what makes them a pattern rather than a history.
Behind every recall is a clause 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.
