BUSINESS

Cheerios recalls 1.8M gluten-free boxes that may contain wheat

Jiayue Huang
USA TODAY
General Mills recalls part of its cereal products.

Food manufacturer General Mills said Monday that it will recall an estimated 1.8 million boxes of its Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios cereals due to an incident that may have added wheat into products labeled as gluten free.

The Minneapolis- based company said in a press release that Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios cereals produced at its Lodi, Californiafacility on certain dates might trigger illness or severe reactions for people with wheat allergies, celiac disease or gluten intolerance.

This recall includes four days production of original Cheerios and thirteen days of production of Honey Nut Cheerios at that California facility.

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

General Mills shared information via social media, as well as on its website, on how consumers can identify the boxes that are being recalled.

"Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios cereals produced at General Mills’ other facilities, or on dates other than those noted at the Lodi, California facility, are not impacted."General Mills said in its press release.  Other gluten-free Cheerios brands, such as Apple Cinnamon Cheerios, Frosted Cheerios and MultiGrain Cheerios, are not involved in this recall, as are no other General Mills cereals, it said.

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