Whole Foods Market, Vegetable Bowl with Hummus, 2/34 oz. packages, UPC 8 26766 82064 1.
Mary's Harvest Fresh Foods, Inc. recalled this product and the FDA reported the enforcement action on 30 August 2017 as Class II. The recall was initiated by the firm. Product is recalled due to potential contamination with 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
Whole Foods Market, Vegetable Bowl with Hummus, 2/34 oz. packages, UPC 8 26766 82064 1. This item was exported to Canada.
UPC
826766820641
Reason for recall
Product is recalled due to potential contamination with E.coli O26.
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 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 4 weeks, from 3 August 2017 to termination on 30 August 2017. 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 1 state, and the FDA published the enforcement report 4 weeks after the firm began the recall.
Recalls of a sauce, dip or condiment run a median of 6 months, so this one was shorter than usual 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.
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.
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.
Stagno's Bakery, Inc. initiated a recall on 05/24/2019 of wholesale frozen bagel dough / bulk to one direct account because the product is potentially contaminated with E. Coli .
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.
