If you’ve been craving some fresh, delicious home-baked bread, you might want to hold off for just a little while, or at least double-check the UPC of the flour sitting in your pantry. Hometown Food Company just issued a recall of its Pillsbury brand “Best Bread Flour” over possible E. coli contamination.
The recall includes some 4,620 cases of the flour, with each case holding eight individual bags. Each bag weighs in at five pounds, for a total of 184,800 pounds of potentially contaminated flour. In a new bulletin issued by the FDA, the company explains how to identify the possibly-tainted flour.
The company says that the product was distributed across a total of 10 states. The states include Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
The bags of flour carry both a UPC code and Lot Code, and you can use this information to identify the potentially contaminated bags. According to the FDA, the recalled flour bags have a UPC Item Code of ‘0 5150020031 5’ and a Lot Code of either ‘8 342’ or ‘8 343’ with Use-By Dates of June 8th or June 9th, 2020.
E. coli is a bacteria that can cause some pretty serious problems if you consume it, and infections can produce a variety of unpleasant symptoms ranging from cramping to diarrhea and vomiting. Infections typically yield symptoms within a few days and it usually clears up within about a week. However, elderly individuals or young children may be at increased risk of serious complications, and a suspected E. coli infection should not be taken lightly.
This should go without saying, but if you have any of the recalled flour you should absolutely not use it. You can request a free replacement directly from the company using the contact information on the recall bulletin page.
