HAD­CO Ltd, the agents of and dis­trib­u­tors for Gen­er­al Mills prod­ucts in Trinidad and To­ba­go, has con­firmed that this coun­try al­so will ad­here to the vol­un­tary re­call of Häa­gen-Dazs Plain Vanil­la ice-cream prod­ucts is­sued by Gen­er­al Mills.

Gen­er­al Mills has in­di­cat­ed that the re­call is nec­es­sary be­cause of a non-com­pli­ance is­sue from a vanil­la ex­tract sup­pli­er.

“Gen­er­al Mills, the man­u­fac­tur­er of Häa­gen-DazsTM, has tak­en the proac­tive de­ci­sion to pro­ceed with a vol­un­tary re­call of its Plain Vanil­la ice-cream prod­ucts sold in Trinidad and To­ba­go, af­ter trace amounts of eth­yl­ene ox­ide (ETO) were de­tect­ed in two batch­es of the prod­uct,” an of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued by HAD­CO said.

“Hav­ing proac­tive­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed this is­sue to de­ter­mine the source, Gen­er­al Mills is tak­ing the pre­cau­tion­ary step of vol­un­tar­i­ly re­call­ing all af­fect­ed batch­es of Häa­gen-DazsTM from all points of sale in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the re­lease not­ed.

On­ly all plain vanil­la prod­ucts with ex­piry dates from 5 Ju­ly 2022 to 18 Ju­ly 2023, are be­ing re­called, the state­ment ex­plained.

“Thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tions un­der­tak­en by Gen­er­al Mills in­to the root cause of this non-com­pli­ance is­sue in­di­cat­ed that trace lev­els of ETO can be traced to one in­gre­di­ent (vanil­la ex­tract) pro­vid­ed by one of the sup­pli­ers. The lev­els of the de­tect­ed sub­stance mar­gin­al­ly ex­ceed an­a­lyt­i­cal de­tec­tion lim­its.

In view of this sit­u­a­tion, Häa­gen-DazsTM Plain Vanil­la prod­ucts, in­clud­ing pints (473 ml), Quarts (946 ml), minicups (95 ml), Half Gal­lons (0.5 gal) and bulk (2.5 gal) for­mats, with BBO/ex­piry dates be­tween 05/07/2022 and 18/07/2023 are be­ing im­me­di­ate­ly re­called.

This vol­un­tary re­call con­cerns on­ly the prod­ucts men­tioned above. No oth­er for­mat or flavours of Häa­gen-Dazs, in­clud­ing oth­er vanil­la-based prod­ucts, are im­pact­ed by this re­call.”

Gen­er­al Mills ad­vis­es cus­tomers who have pur­chased one of these prod­ucts to take the prod­uct or re­ceipt back to the place of pur­chase for a full re­fund.  Cus­tomers al­so can con­tact Gen­er­al Mills at www.gen­eralmills.com/Vanil­laRe­call

“At Häa­gen-Dazs, food qual­i­ty and safe­ty are our top pri­or­i­ty. Häa­gen-Dazs does not use ETO in any of its prod­ucts, which ad­here to all food safe­ty reg­u­la­tions and strict stan­dards in every mar­ket in which we op­er­ate, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the state­ment said.

“We re­gret any in­con­ve­nience caused due to this re­call,” it added.