Benefiber Fiber Drink Mix, Cherry Pomegranate, Sugar Free, packaged in 5.0-oz.

Novartis Consumer Health recalled this product and the FDA reported the enforcement action on 9 October 2013 as Class II. The recall was initiated by the firm. The products are being recalled due to the receipt of a relatively high number of consumer complaints.

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

Benefiber Fiber Drink Mix, Cherry Pomegranate, Sugar Free, packaged in 5.0-oz. boxes containing 24/0.21-oz. stick packs, UPC 300670107246. Distributed by: Novartis Consumer Health, Inc., Parsippany, NJ 07054-0622. Made in France.

UPC

300670107246

Reason for recall

The products are being recalled due to the receipt of a relatively high number of consumer complaints.

Recalling firm

Novartis Consumer Health

Firm location

Lincoln, Nebraska, United States

Classification

Class II

Status

Terminated

Recall number

F-1961-2013

Quantity

162,408/5.0-oz. (24-ct) boxes

Distribution

Product was distributed nationwide and included military distribution. Foreign distribution was made to Panama and Belize.

Initiated

7 May 2013

Reported by FDA

9 October 2013

Terminated

26 November 2014

Firm notified by

Letter

Product codes

10116609, 10118436, 10121279, 10121280, 10122653, 10122654, 10125466, and 10128711

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 6 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 6 separate recalls, which almost every published figure does, overstates it by a factor of 6. 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 6 of them.
• The recall ran for 19 months, from 7 May 2013 to termination on 26 November 2014. 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 beverage or juice run a median of 6 months, so this one was longer than usual for its category. Juice is the other food with its own HACCP regulation in the United States, 21 CFR part 120, which requires a treatment achieving a 5-log reduction of the pertinent pathogen, and unpasteurised juice recalls are almost always a failure of that step or an exemption misapplied.

Filed under beverages and juice. A product can sit in more than one.

Other beverages and juice recalls

These are the closest records in the corpus: the same kind of food. 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 Novartis Consumer Health

The FDA opens one enforcement record per product code, so several of these are frequently one recall event. 11 other records name this firm.

All 12 records for Novartis Consumer Health

All 2013 recalls · All FDA food recall data