The Food and Drug Administration has officially linked the Salmonella Infantis outbreak to General Mills’ Gold Medal flour.

The company recalled some flour products on April 28 due to contamination with Salmonella Infantis, but did not mention this in the recall notice. The company did not say how many pounds of flour it recalled.

Testing by the FDA has shown that the flour produced by General Mills is contaminated with the Salmonella strain that causes the outbreak.

On March 30, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a flour-related Salmonella Infantis outbreak, but did not name a specific flour. At that time, there were 12 confirmed patients with three hospitalizations.

There are 13 patients in 11 states coast to coast as of today’s FDA notice of the outbreak. These states and the number of sick people: California with 1, Illinois with 2, Iowa with 1, Minnesota with 1, Missouri with 1, Nebraska with 1, New Jersey with 1, New York with 1, Ohio with 1, Oregon with 1 , Tennessee 1 and Virginia 1.

Patients are between the ages of 12 and 81, and 92 percent of them are women. In its outbreak announcement on March 30, the CDC said state and local health authorities are asking people about the foods they ate in the week before they got sick. Of the 7 people interviewed at the time, 6 reported eating raw dough or batter. Flour was the only common ingredient in uncooked dough or batter that people reported.

Additional cases are likely to be identified due to the time it takes to test, confirm, and report to federal officials.

The FDA reports that of the patients surveyed, five out of nine particularly remember being exposed to Gold Medal brand raw flour prior to becoming ill. The CDC reports that seven out of eight cases reported eating raw dough or batter.

“FDA tracing has identified a single facility producing flour consumed by patients. The Food and Drug Administration initiated an audit of the General Mills facility in Kansas City, Missouri, and collected product samples. One sample was positive for Salmonella and subsequent analysis Whole genome sequencing (WGS) found that the Salmonella in the positive sample matched the strain of Salmonella that made people sick during this outbreak,” reads today’s outbreak announcement.

Current product recall information
General Mills has announced a nationwide recall of 2-, 2-, and 10-pound bags of its Gold Medal Unbleached and Bleached All-Purpose Flour with a “Best Used By” date of March 27, 2024 and March 28, 2024. No other This recall currently affects Gold Medal flours.

There are concerns that consumers are storing recalled flour in their homes due to its long shelf life. If consumers have gold medal flour at home but do not have the original identity verification packaging, they are advised to throw away the flour.

This voluntary recall includes the following code dates currently in consumer stores or pantries, all with “Better If Used” dates of March 27, 2024 and March 28, 2024:

Previous reviews of General Mills and the outbreak
In January 2016, General Mills Inc. initiated a recall of all 5-pound bags of its Gold Medal brand of unbleached flour with a “best used by” date of April 20, 2020 following the detection of salmonella in a sample.

The iconic company did not indicate how many bags or the total number of pounds affected by the recall in its Jan. 23 recall notice. General Mills urged consumers to check their homes for recalled flour, advising them to dispose of the product if they have it.

The president of General Mills’ food and bakery division said in a recall notice that consumers should not consume flour or anything containing flour, such as cookie dough, that has not been cooked at a high enough temperature to kill bacteria such as salmonella. .

In May 2016, General Mills Inc. initiated a nationwide recall of three brands of flour in response to an E. coli outbreak in 20 states that had sickened at least 38 people at the time.

While government officials were reportedly investigating the outbreak, neither state nor federal agencies released any information about it at the time the Minneapolis-based company announced the recall.

“State and federal authorities investigated 38 cases in 20 states associated with a particular type of E. coli O121 between December 21, 2015 and May 3, 2016,” General said in a press release. Mills.

“Trying to track down the cause of illness, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) found that about half of people reported making something at home with flour at some point before they got sick. Some have reported using General Mills flour.”

The recall includes six SKUs (stocking units or UPC codes) of Gold Medal branded flour, two Signature Kitchens branded flour SKUs, and one Gold Medal Wondra branded flour SKU.

In June 2016, General Mills Inc. and federal officials have been working together to account for recalled flour that has been linked to the E. coli outbreak and has been sent to food manufacturers as well as retailers and restaurants.

Neither the company nor the government included information about the flour sent to food manufacturers in published recall or outbreak notices. General Mills has recalled 10 million pounds of flour after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the company that the flour was linked to an E. coli outbreak that has been ongoing since December 2015.

Both General Mills and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have confirmed Food safety news that some of the recalled flour was sent in bulk to the food industry. The outbreak covered 20 states in June 2016.

General Mills Inc. tripled its flour recall to 30 million pounds in July 2016. Investigations have produced few results in terms of the root cause of the pollution. But, FDA Investigators Outbreak Reported a growing body of DNA evidence suggesting that the outbreak-causing strain of E. coli O121 was present in flour from the General Mills plant in Kansas City, Missouri.

General Mills plant at 2917 Guinotte Ave. in Kansas City, Missouri is in the middle of industrial property surrounded by railroad stations. The area is north of the Missouri River and a few blocks west of Interstate 29.

The poultry company is directly across the street from the flour mill, and the area is a regular transport route for trucks and trains carrying live animals and poultry.

Dan Cohen of the agricultural research company Maccabee Seed in Davis, California, was intrigued by the whole situation.

“It’s still a little hard to imagine how the infection happened,” said Cohen, who has more than 30 years of research and development experience in agriculture and food safety.

“If it came with grain, I would look for wheat near the feedlots because of dust pollution issues.”

In September 2016, the CDC announced the outbreak. Federal health officials have completed their investigation into General Mills flour implicated in the E. coli outbreak that ended up sickening at least 63 people between December 2015 and September 2016, but they say more are expected to get sick of people.

“While the outbreak investigation has been completed, the illnesses are expected to continue for some time to come,” the CDC said in a report. “Consumers who are unaware of the recall may continue to eat the products and get sick. A list of recalled products and how to identify them is available at Consumer Tips Page“.

The 63 confirmed victims of the outbreak were from 24 states and ranged in age from 1 to 95. No one died, but 17 had symptoms so severe that they required hospitalization. One person developed a potentially fatal complication, hemolytic uremic syndrome, a type of kidney failure. The onset of illness for those affected has fluctuated since December. September 21, 2015 to September 5, 2016

General Mills released its first outbreak-related flour recall on May 31st. After tests showed the outbreak strain in bags of flour collected from the homes of outbreak victims in three states, the company doubled the recall, eventually recalling 45 tons of flour.

(To sign up for a free subscription to Food Safety Newsletter, Click here.)