Kellogg Recalls 2.8 Million Boxes of Cereal Due to Hazardous Metallic 'Surprise'
Well, at least it’s not Salmonella? It’s hard to put a positive spin on yet another food recall, but so far, that’s all we’ve got. That and the fact that no injuries have been reported from Kellogg’s recent recall of its Mini-Wheats cereals, despite possibly being contaminated with pieces of metal mesh from faulty machinery at the manufacturing site.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Kellogg will incur a cost of about $30 million to recall all boxes of its Frosted Mini-Wheats Bite-Size Original and its Mini-Wheats Unfrosted Bite Size cereals.
In a public statement made earlier this week, the food manufacturer says that affected boxes of cereal range from single servings up to jumbo sizes of 70 ounces and all were distributed nationwide. For a specific list of affected serial numbers and their respective Sell-By dates, visit Kellogg’s company website.
This problem with the Kellogg seems to be an ongoing one. According to TIME Newsfeed, in 2010, it pulled a variety of its breakfast cereals off of store shelves because of their “odd colors and odors” – not exactly a descriptor you want attached to something you put in your mouth.
That time too, the problem was traced to issues with Kellogg’s supply chain. After undergoing budget cuts, factories were said to have been understaffed and overworked, allowing for more mistakes.
But metal particles are a pretty big mistake, especially when Frosted Mini-Wheats in particular are marketed towards children. Nonetheless, a Kellogg spokesperson reported to The Christian Science Monitor that he’s confident consumer harm will be "limited." Oh, well as long as he's confident…
What’s really startling is the amount of waste created from a recall of this size. The plastic bags inside the 2.8 million boxes of affected cereal are enough to give a conservationist an aneurism. But the food itself is just as detrimental to the environment. Kellogg’s “mistake” means a couple million more pounds of it are going to get dumped in a landfill, and as TakePart reported earlier this year, food is already the biggest contributor of solid waste in landfills.
But perhaps most important is that with poverty levels sky high, and one in seven Americans needing to rely on government subsidies to feed themselves, food thrown in the garbage, especially on such a massive scale, is nothing less than a tragedy.
If you'd like to stay on top of food recalls to insure your own food safety, visit the Food and Drug Administration's Recall & Safety Alert page.
Do you eat Kellogg’s breakfast cereals? Will the recall affect your decision to keep buying them? Let us know in the Comments.
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• New Solutions to Target Food Waste Problem
A Bay Area native, Andri Antoniades previously worked as a fashion industry journalist and medical writer. In addition to reporting the weekend news on TakePart, she volunteers as a web editor for locally-based nonprofits and works as a freelance feature writer for TimeOutLA.com. Email Andri | @andritweets | TakePart.com
