Restaurant Owners: Check Your Fridge for These Recalled Liquid Egg Products

A liquid egg recall is underway, this time specifically for restaurant owners. 

On June 30, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) published a recall notice for 4,620 pounds of liquid egg products by M.G. Waldbaum dba Michael Foods Inc., a company out of  Gaylord, Minnesota, due to "misbranding and undeclared allergens." The notice explained that the recalled products "contains dairy (milk), a known allergen, which is not declared on the product label." 

The liquid egg product was produced on June 11, 2024, and has the following product labels printed on its 32-oz paperboard carton packaging: "FAIR MEADOW Foundations WHOLE EGGS with CITRIC ACID.” It also has a use-by date of “16 SEP 24” and lot code 4162G. According to the FSIS, the product was packaged within a corrugated case labeled "Scrambled Egg Blend" and comes with the same use-by date. 

The recalled items were shipped to restaurant consignees for use in Alabama, Idaho, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, and Utah.   

As the FSIS noted, the issue was discovered during a routine evaluation by the company, which found that a "limited" amount of the Whole Egg with Citric Acid cartons were missing, while there was a corresponding number of excess of Breakfast Blend Scrambled Egg cartons in inventory, meaning the two had been mixed up during manufacturing. And because the Breakfast Blend formulation contains an allergen, it had to be recalled. 

The FSIS recall importantly added that there have been "no confirmed reports of adverse reactions" but that it's "concerned that some product may be in institutional/restaurant refrigerators," thus it's asking restaurant owners to check their products and discard any that are a part of this recall by either throwing them away or returning them to their place of purchase.  

As the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) explains on its website, there are nine major food allergens that must be printed on any food product, including milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soy, and in 2023, it added sesame to this list.

“Sesame is joining the list of major food allergens defined in the law as the result of the Food Allergy Safety, Treatment, Education, and Research (FASTER) Act, which was signed into law April 23, 2021,” the FDA shared in a statement in December of 2022. However, it added on its website that there still may be products out there produced and sold before the new rule took effect, so if you have a sesame allergy it's critical to remain vigilant.