4M Simply Free Semisweet Chocolate Drop (FT), Item # 53385. Net Wt. 50 lbs.
Clasen Quality Chocolater, Inc recalled this product and the FDA reported the enforcement action on 22 March 2023 as Class III. The recall was initiated by the firm. Chocolate may contain undeclared peanut 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
4M Simply Free Semisweet Chocolate Drop (FT), Item # 53385. Net Wt. 50 lbs. (22.68 KG) poly-lined case. Ingredients: Sugar, Chocolate Liquor, Cocoa Butter, Sunflower Lecithin (an emulsifier), and Vanilla Extract. Distributed By: Clasen Quality Chocolate, 5126 West Terrace Drive, Madison, WI 53718
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 2.6 years, from 18 January 2023 to termination on 29 August 2025. 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 12 states, and the FDA published the enforcement report 2 months after the firm began the recall.
Recalls of milk or a dairy product run a median of 7 months, so this one was longer than usual for its category. Dairy recalls split between pathogen contamination in products that skipped or under-ran pasteurisation and undeclared milk in products that should never have contained it, which is the same allergen viewed from two directions.
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.
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.
Undeclared Soy. The firm received complaints of sausage in the burritos. Upon review the firm discovered the sausage contains soy which is not listed on the label.
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.
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.
