Pasteurized Process American Cheese, yellow, 6 - 5lb loaves per case. Brands as follows…
Great Lakes Cheese Co Inc recalled this product and the FDA reported the enforcement action on 4 December 2019 as Class III. The recall was initiated by the firm. 5 lb. loaves of cheese may contain metal foreign 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
Pasteurized Process American Cheese, yellow, 6 - 5lb loaves per case. Brands as follows: 1) Delicatessan Quality; 2) John F. Martin & Sons; 3) Best Yet; 4) Market 32; 5) Black Bear; 6) ShopRite
Reason for recall
5 lb. loaves of cheese may contain metal foreign material.
Five things about this record are not in the record itself, and each one changes how it should be read.
Class III means the FDA judged that the product was unlikely to cause harm but violated FDA labelling or manufacturing regulation. 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 6 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 6 separate recalls, which almost every published figure does, overstates it by a factor of 6. All 6 of them are listed on this page.
The recall ran for 11 months, from 11 October 2019 to termination on 25 September 2020. 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 11 states, and the FDA published the enforcement report 8 weeks after the firm began the recall.
Recalls of cheese run a median of 7 months, so this one was longer than usual for its category. Cheese dominates Listeria recalls among dairy products because soft and semi-soft varieties hold enough moisture for the organism to grow at refrigeration temperature, and because most are eaten without any further cooking step.
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.
Filed under cheese. A product can sit in more than one.
Every product in this recall
The FDA opened 6 enforcement records for this one recall, one per product code. This page carries all of them; the 5 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.
5 lb. loaves of cheese may contain metal foreign material.
Class III
Other cheese 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.
Metal fragments. The potential foreign object is a hard, metal (stainless steel), curled spring. Dimensions of a similar spring measure 2.27mm in cross-sectional thickness and 25.38mm in coil width. Spring ends are not sharp but may be sharp if broken/ cut.
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.
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.
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.
