Two Million Mislabeled Cheerios Recalled Due to Allergy Risk

Shares of General Mills have risen 13 percent over the past year and closed at $57.22 on Monday. In all, 1.8 million boxes were included in the recall.

If you purchased a box of Cheerios or Honey Nut Cheerios labeled “gluten free” recently, you may want to double check the expiration date to see if it is part of a nationwide voluntary recall.

General Mills also produces other cereals and other flavors of Cheerios, but none of those products are affected and are not being recalled, according to Public Health. Consumers who are suffering from wheat allergies or gluten intolerance, as well as celiac disease are urged to not consume the affected products. Cheerios are made primarily of oats, which naturally do not have gluten, however, the cereal manufacturing process can still allow small amounts of gluten to intermingle.

In Gluten-Free Foods in the US, 5th Edition, Packaged Facts reveals that year-over-year growth in the gluten-free foods market has been impressive with sales of key categories (salty snacks, cracks, pasta, bread, cold/ready-to-eat cereal, cookies, baking mixes, frozen bread/dough, and flour) experiencing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 34% over the five-year period ended in 2014.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reportedly received at least 125 complaints from people who say they developed gastrointestinal problems from September on after eating what they thought were gluten-free Cheerios.

“Our Lodi production facility lost rail service for a time and our gluten-free oat flour was being off-loaded from rail cars to trucks for delivery to our facility on the dates in question”.

“In an isolated incident involving purely human error, wheat flour was inadvertently introduced into our gluten-free oat flour system at Lodi”, Jim Murphy, president of General Mills’ cereal business, said in a statement on a company blog.

FDA noted that there are no reports of anyone being hospitalized or any deaths from Cheerios which were labeled gluten-free.

“Please know we’ll be working even harder to earn back your trust”.

Gluten-free success is nothing new for the company, as Packaged Facts said General Mills was the first mainstream company to push out gluten-free cereal in the form of Chex.