Single-serve plastic packet Italian Dressing; Case packing: Sysco Classic Cls Italian…
Ventura Foods, LLC recalled this product and the FDA reported the enforcement action on 24 January 2018 as Class II. The recall was initiated by the firm. A plastic foreign object was inadvertently introduced into the product stream. The firm is recalling product as not all plastic has been accounted.
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
Single-serve plastic packet Italian Dressing; Case packing: Sysco Classic Cls Italian 500 12Gm ; 47014SYS; B13017; single-serve plastic packet: Chef's Quality Creamy Italian; Chef's Quality; 60/1.5 OZ Pouches Net Wt 5.6 LB; 16689CHQ, B33317;
Reason for recall
A plastic foreign object was inadvertently introduced into the product stream. The firm is recalling product as not all plastic has been accounted.
Two or more of the following: Email, Fax, Letter, Press Release, Telephone, Visit
Product codes
B13017 lot date 11/30/2017; 33317; lot date 11/29/2017
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 12 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 12 separate recalls, which almost every published figure does, overstates it by a factor of 12. 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 12 of them.
The recall ran for 7 months, from 7 December 2017 to termination on 28 June 2018. 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 7 weeks after the firm began the recall.
Recalls of a sauce, dip or condiment run a median of 6 months, so this one was about typical 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.
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.
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.
Two lots of Sysco Classic Liquid Margarine have mislabeled interior packaging that identifies the product as Clear Canola Salad Oil STF which does not declare soy lecithin on the labeling.
A blue plastic bag was inadvertently introduced into product stream. During the manufacturing process, the blue plastic bag was torn into many pieces and ended up in the finished product. While many pieces of the blue plastic bag have been recovered, there is no evidence that all pieces are accounted for.
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.
