HCC Basil Pesto FS and S; Houston Culinary Center Basil Pesto

H E B recalled this product and the FDA reported the enforcement action on 23 December 2015 as Class III. The recall was initiated by the firm. Use of ingredient with violative pesticide residue.

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

HCC Basil Pesto FS and S; Houston Culinary Center Basil Pesto

Reason for recall

Use of ingredient with violative pesticide residue.

Recalling firm

H E B

Firm location

San Antonio, Texas, United States

Classification

Class III

Status

Terminated

Recall number

F-0267-2016

Quantity

225 units

Distribution

Texas

Initiated

18 September 2015

Reported by FDA

23 December 2015

Terminated

2 August 2016

Firm notified by

E-Mail

Product codes

27906600000 and 27903900000; Sell By Dates 9/26/15

Reading this record

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 18 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 18 separate recalls, which almost every published figure does, overstates it by a factor of 18. 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 18 of them.
• The recall ran for 10 months, from 18 September 2015 to termination on 2 August 2016. 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 months after the firm began the recall.
• Recalls of a sauce, dip or condiment run a median of 6 months, so this one was longer than usual for its category. Sauces and dips sit at the intersection of the acidified foods rule and the allergen rule: an equilibrium pH above 4.6 turns a shelf-stable product into a botulism risk, and the ingredient list is long enough that an allergen is easy to lose.

What this recall was for

Filed under sauces, dips and condiments. A product can sit in more than one.

Other sauces, dips and condiments 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 H E B

The FDA opens one enforcement record per product code, so several of these are frequently one recall event. 17 other records name this firm.

All 18 records for H E B

All 2015 recalls · All FDA food recall data