Class ITerminated · reported 2020-02-19

Potentate flour / Prod Code: 802217 in 50# bags

Adm Milling recalled this product and the FDA reported the enforcement action on 19 February 2020 as Class I. The recall was initiated by the firm. E.coli O26

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
Potentate flour / Prod Code: 802217 in 50# bags
Reason for recall
E.coli O26
Recalling firm
Adm Milling
Firm location
Decatur, Illinois, United States
Classification
Class I
Status
Terminated
Recall number
F-0699-2020
Quantity
7400 bags
Distribution
AR CT FL IL IN MA MD MI NJ NY OH PA WV
Initiated
28 September 2019
Reported by FDA
19 February 2020
Terminated
28 September 2020
Firm notified by
Other
Product codes
Lot Codes 25JAN9BL and 24JAN9BL

Reading this record

Five things about this record are not in the record itself, and each one changes how it should be read.

  • Class I means the FDA judged a reasonable probability that the product would cause serious health consequences or death. 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 19 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 19 separate recalls, which almost every published figure does, overstates it by a factor of 19. 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 19 of them.
  • The recall ran for 12 months, from 28 September 2019 to termination on 28 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 FDA published the enforcement report 5 months after the firm began the recall.
  • Recalls of a grain, flour or pasta product run a median of 6 months, so this one was longer than usual for its category. Flour is a raw agricultural product that consumers treat as though it were cooked, which is the whole reason raw flour recalls exist: nothing in milling is a kill step, and the hazard only appears when somebody eats the dough.

What this recall was for

E. coli

Shiga toxin-producing E. coli recalls concentrate in foods eaten raw or lightly cooked, where no step in the process is hot enough or long enough to be a kill step.

A preventive controls plan covers E. coli contamination 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)(1)
Process controls: the controls that apply a treatment, such as a validated kill step, at the point where it reduces the hazard to a safe level.
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.
21 CFR 120
Juice HACCP: the hazard analysis and critical control point system required for juice processors, including a treatment achieving a 5-log pathogen reduction.

Filed under grains, flour and pasta. A product can sit in more than one.

Other grains, flour and pasta 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 Adm Milling

The FDA opens one enforcement record per product code, so several of these are frequently one recall event. 18 other records name this firm.

All 19 records for Adm Milling

All 2020 recalls · All FDA food recall data

21 CFR 117.135(c)(1) 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.

Early access

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.