-Washed and Packed Whole Green Lettuce Fillets, item # 80415, are packaged in 10 lbs.
Spokane Produce Inc recalled this product and the FDA reported the enforcement action on 13 February 2019 as Class I. The recall was initiated by the firm. The green leaf lettuce fillets and heads are recalled due to a potential to be contaminated with E. Coli O157:H7.
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
-Washed and Packed Whole Green Lettuce Fillets, item # 80415, are packaged in 10 lbs. cases, foodservice item distributed without label. -Washed and Packed Whole Green Lettuce Fillets, item # 80416, are packaged in 5 lbs. cases, foodservice item distributed without label. -Green Lettuce Heads, item # 45611, 6 heads are packaged in a bag, distributed without label.
Reason for recall
The green leaf lettuce fillets and heads are recalled due to a potential to be contaminated with E. Coli O157:H7.
Green Lettuce Fillets (16/10 lb. cases and 11/5 lb. cases); Green Lettuce heads (36/6 ct. Bags)
Distribution
Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.
Initiated
14 December 2018
Reported by FDA
13 February 2019
Terminated
20 February 2019
Firm notified by
Telephone
Product codes
None.
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 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. All 12 of them are listed on this page.
The recall ran for 2 months, from 14 December 2018 to termination on 20 February 2019. 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 2 months after the firm began the recall.
Recalls of fresh produce run a median of 7 months, so this one was shorter than usual for its category. Fresh produce is the category where contamination arrives before the facility does: irrigation water, soil amendments and field workers are the routes, and nothing downstream of the farm is a kill step for a product eaten raw.
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 fresh produce. A product can sit in more than one.
Every product in this recall
The FDA opened 12 enforcement records for this one recall, one per product code. This page carries all of them; the 11 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.
The sandwiches were made with green leaf and were recalled due to a potential to be contaminated with E. Coli O157:H7.
Class I
Other fresh produce 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.
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.
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.
