The FDA and General Mills are urging you to avoid eating raw dough, batter or other uncooked food made with flour. E. coli-tainted flour from General Mills has sickened 46 people in 21 states and prompted about 45 million pounds of it to be recalled.

General Mills has expanded a previously-announced recall of flour products, after receiving four new confirmed reports of illness. The flour could be tained by the E. coli bacterium. The recall was originally announced May 31.

The recall now includes ten different General Mills product groups including flour and cake mixes. Find out more about which products and which sell-by dates are involved here.

The illnesses reported to health officials continue to be connected with consumers reporting that they ate or handled uncooked dough or ate uncooked batter made with raw flour. No illnesses have been connected with flour that has been properly baked, cooked or handled according to a report on the General Mills Web site.

The commpany says the addition of new flour production dates is the result of General Mills conducting proactive flour testing and new information from health officials who are using new techniques to trace illnesses. E.coli (several sub-types) has been detected in a small number of General Mills flour samples and some have been linked to new patient illnesses that fell outside of the previously recalled dates. The company says it does not know if this marks a higher prevalence of E.coli in flour than normal, if this is an issue isolated to General Mills’ flour, or if this is an issue across the flour industry. The newer detection and genome sequencing tools are also possibly making a connection to flour that may have always existed at these levels.

In order for severe E. coli illness to occur from flour, the company says all three of the following things have to happen:
1) The flour a consumer is using has to contain the rare sub-types of E.coli that can make you sick.
2) The consumer has to eat raw dough, batter or other uncooked food made with the flour, or handle the raw dough and not wash their hands.
3) The consumer’s individual health characteristics will impact if they get sick and how severely. Some consumers have mild symptoms and others get very sick. It is not always known who will get sick and who will not.

 

(Staff and wire reports)