Cheerios Recall and 10 Reasons I Am Mad at General Mills

Yesterday General Mills recalled 1.8 million boxes of Cheerios due to undeclared wheat. According to General Mills, "In an isolated incident involving purely human error, wheat flour was inadvertently introduced into our gluten-free oat flour system at Lodi." You can read the entire Class I product recall press release here. 

According to the FDA website, a Class I recall is "Dangerous or defective products that predictably could cause serious health problems or death. Examples include: food found to contain botulinum toxin, food with undeclared allergens, a label mix-up on a lifesaving drug, or a defective artificial heart valve."

I am livid by this whole situation. First and foremost, General Mills put wheat flour into a product that was supposed to be gluten-free. Period. WHEAT IS NOT GLUTEN-FREE. This is gluten and celiac disease 101. How did "human error" allow for enough wheat flour to be introduced into the production process to affect 1.8 million boxes of Cheerios? Did not one single person notice trucks with wheat entering the facility??

I have SO much to say about this topic and honestly am so angry by the whole thing. If you follow me on Twitter, you will see I have not kept quite about this nor will I. This is very serious. If 1% of the population has celiac disease and 1.8  million boxes have been recalled, this means that 18,000 people with celiac disease could have been affected by this recall. Add on top of that people with wheat allergies, non-celiac sensitivities, and anaphylaxis reactions to wheat and the numbers of the potentially affected could continue to grow to tens of thousands.


Here are my Top 10 Reasons I Am Livid at General Mills


All screenshots below either come from the General Mills blog, the Cheerios Facebook page, or the press release.  My apologies to Mr. Kevin Hunt who unfortunately is the spokesperson in this mess. Don't shoot the messenger! 

1. General Mills has divided the celiac community. Our celiac disease community is small compared to other health communities, but we have strong voices. When something like this happens, the opinions and nasty comments start flying. Our community becomes an "Us" vs "Them" society. There are those of us who were upset about the gluten-free Cheerios to begin with and those who became "Cheerios Cheerleaders." My first blog post ignited some VERY strong emails and comments. I was practically in tears with some of the emails people were writing me telling me off for talking poorly about their beloved Cheerios. I was reporting facts based on my phone call yet people didn't want to hear the truth. I then saw other celiac bloggers start to publicly bash one another on Twitter and Facebook. These are people that I respect(ed) blatantly hurting other celiacs with nasty words and accusatory statements. During a time where we should be banding together to help each other, General Mills hurt our community more than just with wheat. GM divided us when we need to be united.
   
   
2. Testing for gluten is obviously not being done properly or at all. When I spoke to the GM PR/marketing team on September 15th, they told me that gluten-free Cheerios were tested "multiple times" throughout the production process including at the end of the process. How did 1.8 million boxes leave the GM facility without testing? If the wheat flour was introduced at the beginning of the production cycle, how did these boxes make it all the way to the end without ever being tested? The GM PR team admits the finished 1.8 million boxes were not tested.
3. This is not an isolated incident. This Cheerios recall is a NATIONAL RECALL. The Cheerios in question were produced in Lodi, California but distributed nationwide. There is a lot of misinformation out there in the gluten-free social media world saying this is only a recall for Cheerios sold in California. This is not true. The recalled Cheerios products were shipped across the country!
   
   
4. People have reported having gluten reactions to Cheerios, yet GM denied this claim. During my 9/15 call when I asked about the reports of people having a gluten reaction to Cheerios, the PR team told me that people were either reacting to the increased fiber in their diet or the oats themselves. Yesterday's recall explicitly reported that wheat was present in 1.8 million boxes of Cheerios. Yet, General Mills continues to use oat intolerance or other dietary restrictions as an excuse as to why people are getting sick despite admitting to wheat present in their product.
   
   
5. General Mills had a very slow response time to reports of illness. While I understand that on Sunday, testing confirmed the presence of gluten and the recall was issued within 24 hours. What I don't understand is that people have been reporting a gluten-type response to Cheerios for about a month now and General Mills only addressed those concerns this week. What took so long?
   
   
6. General Mills is embarrassed. Shitting your pants is more embarrassing. During one of my absolute worst glutening episodes about 7 years ago, I was so sick that I was vomiting and having diarrhea at the same time. I was so violently ill that I had to crawl to the bathroom and during that crawl, my body was rejecting the gluten from every single orifice possible. Here I was a grown woman writhing in pain on the floor and not even able to make it to the toilet. I was that sick and it was awful. Now imagine 1.8 million people with celiac disease having a similar reaction or even worse. It is beyond embarrassing, it is downright mortifying. Don't tell me you are embarrassed Mr. Jim Murphy until you have crawled a mile in my glutened shoes.
   
   
7. General Mills violated the trust of the celiac community. Read any of the Cheerios responses on their Facebook page. They know they lost the trust of many thousands of people with celiac disease. They admit this over and over again. I believe they have lost a LOT of customers due to this recall.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
8. How did General Mills clean up after this mistake? I posted this to the Cheerios blog but my question hasn't been answered yet. If GM had enough wheat flour to affect 1.8 million boxes of cereal, how did they clean the facility to ensure this would not happen again? I want to know how Cheerios and General Mills were able to clean away the wheat flour in their facility.
   
   
9. What happened to the gluten-free trucks? During my call on 9/15, I was told that General Mills used dedicated gluten-free rail cars or trucks to transport the oat flour and the product. According to this press release, the rail cars at the Lodi facility were unavailable and flour was being off-loaded into trucks. Would use of the dedicated gluten-free trucks have avoided this recall? We may never know!
   
   
   
   
   
10. Cheerios made people sick. End of story. Celiac Disease is not a joke and autoimmune reactions to gluten can be severe. It is inexcusable that so many people have reported illness due to eating Cheerios. Whether General Mills did a recall or not, they need to take ALL reports of reaction very seriously and not just from the batches of contaminated product made in Lodi.

***

If you got sick from eating Cheerios, YOU MUST contact General Mills and the FDA. Here is how:

Contact General Mills by website, email, phone, fax, or letter. I encourage you calling them directly. Whichever method you use, the box information is critical to your complaint. Do not throw away your box! Keep everything and read them everything they ask for during your complaint. 

General Mills Customer Service: http://consumercontacts.generalmills.com/ConsolidatedContact.aspx?page=http://www.generalmills.com&js=True

Contact the FDA by phone or website. This information comes directly from the Gluten-Free Watchdog website: 

If you believe you became ill after eating Cheerios, FDA is asking that you contact FDA’s MEDWATCH, the Adverse Event Reporting System. You can do this online https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/medwatch/index.cfm?action=reporting.homeor via phone (800) 332-1088. Choose option #4 to speak to a representative.

Cheerios Update: Phone Call with General Mills

Photo source

On Tuesday, I spoke to two marketing representatives from General Mills who were representing the new gluten-free Cheerios. I wish I got off the phone with Cheerios and General Mills with great news, but I was really frustrated when I hung up the phone. I went into this call really prepared. I asked my readers and Facebook fans to share their concerns and comments with me. I watched all of their videos and read the FAQ pages to educate myself about the gluten-free Cheerio process. I read all of the scientific reports by Tricia Thompson at Gluten-Free Watchdog. I read blogs, Facebook, and Tweets for people both for and against the new Cheerios. I made sure what I was reading was recent and not driven by the blogger promotional trip to General Mills in the spring. I was prepared.

Yet, I felt disappointed with the call. I got off the call feeling like the celiac community isn't safe eating these new Cheerios despite the years of research and development. I really do not think General Mills is quite there yet with a truly gluten-free product and that complaints of people getting sick need to be taken very seriously.

Before reading the rest of my post, I do encourage you to watch the Cheerios videos and read the FAQ page to familiarize yourself with the process.

I took a ton of notes from our call, but here are some of my key takeaways:

1. General Mills does not use gluten-free oats to produce their Cheerios.
General Mills uses oats that could be grown in the same fields as wheat, barley, and rye. GM told me that there aren't enough gluten-free oats in the country to fulfill their demand for Cheerios production. They are committed to using "cleaner" oats that have less foreign pieces of gluten grains but there is no immediate plan to switch to gluten-free oats. GM is working to improve "cleanliness" of the oats but this didn't seem safe enough to me. Broken pieces of wheat/rye/barley, residue, dust, etc. are all big concerns to me.

2. The production process is 100% NOT gluten-free from farm to finish. 
Even though the Cheerios gluten-free page outlines the production process, I had questions since the wording in the FAQ is slightly different from the video. The video mentions a "gluten-free production line" while the FAQ says "oats are processed in a dedicated gluten-free facility." I asked the GM team to break this down for me to explain the difference along the way.

Step 1: Oats are transported from the farm to the sorting facility. Since these oats could contain fragments of wheat, rye, and barley from the beginning, this facility is NOT gluten-free. Gluten enters the building. Period. GM then sorts the grains mechanically (see video) and the final oats are considered gluten-free. Again, this is NOT a dedicated gluten-free facility yet the final product is deemed to be gluten-free. This seems confusing to me.

Step 2: Mechanically-sorted oats are transported to the mill where the oat flour is produced. These oats are either transported via dedicated gluten-free trucks or on a conveyer belt to the nearby facility. This step seemed questionable to me. Does a conveyer belt from a non-dedicated facility guarantee a gluten-free product? Yes says Cheerios.

Step 3: Oat flours is transported to the Cheerios production facility. The oat flour is transported to the facilities that actually make the Cheerios via dedicated gluten-free rail cars. If more oats need to be transported than available rail cars, the dedicated gluten-free trucks from step 2 are used. Ok, fair enough.

Step 4: Cheerios are produced using the processed oat flour. OK, this is the part I had a real problem with in the production process. Cheerios are produced on gluten-free production lines BUT the facilities could be shared. All gluten-free production is segregated from general production, but these facilities are NOT 100% gluten-free. Hmmm... so the facility is gluten-free or not?

3. Gluten testing is done internally by Medallion Labs. General Mills currently has NO plans on publicly releasing gluten testing results from their internal testing. GM did say that "other labs" have done testing too, but it was unclear to me which labs and which tests were actually being used. For more details about the test methods, visit Gluten-Free Watchdog for much more in-depth information. In my opinion, if Cheerios has nothing to hide they should make their test results public. Transparency is key in the celiac community.

4. People are getting sick from eating the gluten-free Cheerios. General Mills acknowledged they have heard about people getting sick from the new Cheerios. They also were aware of the petition with signatures more than 1,600 names of people supporting change to the Cheerios production process. The Cheerios reps did emphasize that General Mills always takes consumer complaints very seriously. This is where I felt GM got the most defensive and had some answers that sounded more like excuses to me.

• "People might be reacting to the high fiber content of Cheerios." 
• "People might be reacting to oats themselves." (Note: I mentioned to GM I have a sensitivity to oats and/or the avenin, the protein found in oats and then they gave me this answer.)
• "People aren't used to eating oats." For a long time, celiacs were told NOT to eat oats. GM seemed to think introducing a new grain into the diet could cause an initial reaction.
• "Talk to your doctor if you think you are having a reaction to Cheerios" or "Speak to your doctor first before eating Cheerios." If you have medical concerns about your products, why call them gluten-free? 

As expected, Cheerios never came out and admitted that their product might actually be making people sick. They did say they will investigate all of these claims seriously if people contact General Mills directly.

5. Cheerios in Canada are NOT gluten-free. This was a great question from Facebook and Twitter. General Mills thought this was a great question too! Health Canada updated their statement on oats in Canada in May. You can read their entire report here.  General Mills said they are working directly with Health Canada to figure out how to produce gluten-free Cheerios for Canada.  My question is why gluten-free Cheerios in the US aren't safe enough to sell in Canada? I understand our FDA standards aren't identical to Health Canada but are the US Cheerios not allowed to be sold by the regulations in Canada. I need to research this more. 

***

If you got sick from eating Cheerios, YOU MUST contact General Mills and the FDA. Here is how:

1. Contact General Mills by website, email, phone, fax, or letter. I encourage you calling them directly. Whichever method you use, the box information is critical to your complaint. Do not throw away your box! Keep everything and read them everything they ask for during your complaint. 

General Mills Customer Service: http://consumercontacts.generalmills.com/ConsolidatedContact.aspx?page=http://www.generalmills.com&js=True

2. Contact the FDA by phone or website. This information comes directly from the Gluten-Free Watchdog website: 

If you believe you became ill after eating Cheerios, FDA is asking that you contact FDA’s MEDWATCH, the Adverse Event Reporting System. You can do this online https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/medwatch/index.cfm?action=reporting.home or via phone (800) 332-1088. Choose option #4 to speak to a representative.

I want to hear from you too! I now have a direct line of communication to General Mills and I want to be your voice. Leave your comments below so I can share them with the Cheerios team.

Do You Have Questions About the New Gluten-Free Cheerios?

Let's ask General Mills ALL of our gluten-free Cheerios questions.
See below!

If you read any gluten-free blogs or follow them on Facebook or Twitter, there is a good chance you have seen someone post about the new gluten-free Cheerios. Over the summer, General Mills announced their Cheerios are now gluten-free. You can read all about how General Mills made Cheerios gluten-free here. They also put up a blog post at the beginning of July that highlights the process.

As you know from reading my blog, I cannot tolerate oats even if certified gluten-free. I am one of those people with celiac that still has a severe reaction to oats. For three decades, my doctors told me to avoid oats altogether and I did. Once I introduced them into my diet, the brain fog set in. I decided I went without oats for so long that I didn't need them and cut them out immediately. Some celiacs react to the protein avenin found in oats and it looks like I am one of those people.

While I never planned on eating the new Cheerios, I know so many people who were excited about the opportunity to eat their favorite childhood cereal again. The excitement plus some of the controversy is why I starting following this story closely. Controvery?? Yes, there is a bit of a debate going on in the celiac and gluten-free community about how these Cheerios are produced and if they are causing a reaction or not. The customers seemed divided. Feedback is both good and bad. There are haters and lovers as with most stories in the celiac community.

Please read some of the links below to get a sense of how the community feels about Cheerios.

Gluten-Free Watchdog
Gluten-Free Cheerios: Updated Position Statement
Gluten-Free Cheerios: Take Three
Gluten-Free Cheerios: Take Two

I'm A Celiac
Having trouble with the Gluten Free Cheerios?
Why Eating a Bowl of Cheerios Makes You Feel Normal Again
Gluten Free Honey Nut Cheerios Are Here

Hunter's Lyonesse
Pissing in the Gluten-Free Cheerios
Effecting Change

Gluten-Free Homemaker
Gluten-Free Cheerios: Safe or Not?

Gluten Freeville
Newly “Gluten Free” Cheerios – To try or not to try?

Two Celiacs and a Baby
The Gluten Free Cheerios Saga – Part One

Gluten-Free Baking
Review: Gluten-Free Honey Nut Cheerios

Change.org
Change testing and production of gluten-free Cheerios to be safe for all.

I have the opportunity to speak directly with a representative of General Mills and Cheerios on Tuesday. I need your help. I want to ask ALL of your questions!! You can either post them in the comments section below or email me directly at gfreefun@gmail.com. I will do my best to ask everything and give you a full report of my conversation. I believe in transparency so I am encouraged by this opportunity to speak directly with the company. I want to address all of your concerns, share your feedback, and get some answers. Please send me your comments and questions as soon as possible!