GIS General Mills Inc

By Tess Stynes 

General Mills Inc. is recalling 1.8 million boxes of Cheerios because wheat flour was inadvertently added to cereal labeled gluten-free, a gaffe that illustrates the challenges for big companies adjusting to new consumer demands.

The recall, which represents less than 1% of annual sales volume for Cheerios, comes after General Mills trumpeted in February that it would start making five varieties of the storied brand, including the original flavor and its better-selling Honey Nut Cheerios, without gluten. The Minneapolis food maker said the new boxes began appearing on shelves in late July.

In recent years, U.S. consumers have started to shun gluten, which is found in wheat and other widely used grains. Some 20 million Americans have either a sensitivity to gluten or a hereditary condition called celiac disease in which ingesting gluten damages the small intestine. But others have turned to a gluten-free diet in hopes of losing weight or gaining other health benefits.

Food companies have looked for ways to cater to this growing trend. Cheerios were a relatively easy target for General Mills because oats, the main ingredient, don't contain gluten. But it took General Mills years to make the brand gluten-free because it was difficult to ensure its supply of oats weren't mixed with other grains containing the allergen.

The company said it developed a way to sort out the small amount of wheat, rye and barley that is unintentionally mixed in with General Mills' supply of whole oats at the farms or during transportation to its mill.

General Mills said in an email that it had tested the oat supply and then the oat flour sent to the factory that made the recalled Cheerios, and both met regulators' standard to be free of gluten. However, General Mills lost rail service at the factory, so it had to transfer the oat flour from railcars to trucks. The company said that is when wheat flour was inadvertently mixed into the gluten-free oat flour.

That caused General Mills to recall four days of production of original Cheerios, with "better if used by" dates between July 14, 2016, and July 17, 2016, and 13 days production of Honey Nut Cheerios, with "better if used by" dates between July 12, 2016, and July 25, 2016.

The company said this was "an isolated incident," and that no other cereals were affected.

The Cheerios were made in General Mills' Lodi, Calif., plant. In September 2014, General Mills announced it would close that factory, which employed about 430 workers, by the end of 2015.

General Mills has said it invested heavily in the construction of a facility to separate oats and had to make changes to its cereal plants, adding walls and cleaning procedures, to meet federal regulators' standards for foods labeled gluten-free. The Food and Drug Administration requires foods labeled gluten-free to have less than 0.002%, or 20 parts per million, of gluten.

"It's the culmination of several years of hard work by hundreds of General Mills employees who dedicated thousands of hours to making it happen," General Mills said on its blog in July.

Gluten-free isn't the only food trend General Mills is trying to tackle with Cheerios.

It also converted its Cheerios recipe to make its original variety without genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, last year. Even though it required switching out only a small amount of ingredients, the company said that process also took years to ensure the ingredients weren't contaminated.

Tess Stynes contributed to this article.

Write to Annie Gasparro at annie.gasparro@wsj.com

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 05, 2015 19:19 ET (23:19 GMT)

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