'Gluten-free' cereal brings customer complaints

Monday, December 7, 2015

In early October, General Mills recalled four-days-worth of July production from its Lodi, Calif., facility – that's about 1.8 million boxes of Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios – because of contamination from wheat.

The recall followed customer complaints to the miller and to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of adverse health effects following consumption of the cereals, which were labelled as gluten-free. Later reports indicated that oat flour was contaminated when off-loaded from bulk railroad cars into trucks 25 kilometres away while direct rail service to the plant was shut down for track maintenance. One truck was known to have hauled wheat flour previously.

A reported 455 million kilograms of oats yearly pass through a new General Mills plant in Minnesota, where a seven-storey cleaning house was recently completed. Cylinders separate seeds by size, discarding smaller barley and wheat seeds. But stuff happens. BF