FDA: Popular Retailer Recalls Cheese Over Contamination Concerns
Aldi cheese is being recalled over metal fragment contamination.
It was made a Class II recall, which means consuming the product may cause serious adverse health concerns.
Below is more information about the recalled product.
Processed cheese can last a good bit of time in the fridge, which is why it's worth checking the back of yours for recently recalled Happy Farms by Aldi Colby Jack Finely Shredded Cheese. The product was recalled in February over potential foreign material contamination. Now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is classifying it as a Class II recall, meaning that consumption could cause 'serious adverse health consequences.'
Four-hundred cases of the 12-ounce pouches of cheese were recalled in four states—Connecticut, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania—because they could potentially be contaminated with foreign matter—specifically, stainless steel fragments. The packages have the item number of 170374, the UPC code 4061463330840, and best-by dates of July 13, 2025 and July 14, 2025. If you believe you have affected product, do not eat it.
A press release announcing the recall was not published, so further details regarding how the cheese was contaminated are not available, nor are specific disposal or return instructions. However, according to Aldi's recall policy, the stores work to 'swiftly and effectively remove such products' from shelves. 'A 'pull-from-sale' alert from either the manufacturer of the suspect product or our own Corporate Buying Department will trigger a rapid response plan for handling recalls,' the grocer's site reads. 'Products that do not meet Aldi or government standards in any of these areas will be efficiently and effectively removed from sale.'
If you do still happen to have recalled product, reschedule taco night and follow the standard procedure for disposal and reaching out to either the store you purchased it from or the manufacturer, which, in this case, is Great Lakes Cheese Co Inc. The manufacturer can be reached at 440-834-2500 or via email at hello@greatlakescheese.com.
Other wellness and food products recently impacted by recalls include acne treatments, canned tuna, pancake mix, and more. A February report published by the Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit consumer protection group, analyzed data from food recalls in 2024 and found that there were about 300 food recalls last year leading to nearly 1,400 illnesses associated with pathogens like salmonella, E. coli, and others.
Food safety experts attribute the apparent rise in numbers to a few causes, including a lack of proper sanitation practices and increased monitoring and reporting of these issues overall. 'We don't find outbreaks if we don't look for them,' Barbara Kowalcyk, Ph.D., associate professor and director of the Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security at George Washington University previously told Prevention. 'We're doing more investigations, but we also have better tools to do investigations with.' As a result, the U.S. may be experiencing more outbreaks and recalls than before, but the food supply is becoming more tightly regulated, she said.
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The company cooperated with the FDA in voluntarily recalling all the products it had sold for the past month between the end of March and the end of April. The recall covered nearly 100 ice cream products being sold in supermarkets in four states under several brand names. The quick and comprehensive recall helped avoid any illnesses, hospitalizations, or deaths. Five months later, in September, the company issued a smaller recall for one flavor and one size of its ice cream because of possible undeclared peanuts (which could've affected allergy sufferers). This time around, an error stemmed from a third-party manufacturer who had failed to add the warning to the label. Luckily, not every Listeria recall happens because people became ill first, which was thankfully the case with the 2018 Fieldbrook Foods ice cream recall. This was a lucky break, considering that several samples of the product had tested positive for Listeria during routine testing. The company started out by recalling two brands of its orange cream bars. However, in less than a week, the recall had expanded to include both orange cream and chocolate-covered ice cream bars it had sold to around 40 different supermarket chains under different brand names. Some of the affected stores included big names like Kroger, Meijer, and Safeway. In fact, it was one of the biggest food recalls in Aldi's history. Even though the evidence only pointed to Listeria in products made after the last day of October, the recall covered all the products the company had produced throughout the entire year of 2017 just to be safe. The company also stopped making all of its products while trying to find the source of Listeria in the plant under the FDA's guidance. The deadliest ice cream recall in U.S. history was the 2015 Blue Bell ice cream recall. After this Listeria outbreak was over, there had been 10 cases in four states, with all 10 of them ending up in the hospital and three dying. When the outbreak happened, Blue Bell ended up voluntarily recalling every ice cream and other frozen product that anyone anywhere had, no matter which facility it came from. While this sounds a bit extreme, it turns out that the FDA found Listeria during its inspections at plants in three different locations: Brenham, Texas, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, and Sylacauga, Alabama. Plus, the inspections revealed other sanitary issues. Not all of the strains of Listeria connected to the outbreak were genetically related, but some were. So, that didn't speak well for the company in general. The then-president of Blue Bell, Paul Kruse, was prosecuted in 2020 for trying to cover up the fact that the company knew it was selling infected ice cream and ended up paying a $100,000 penalty. Additionally, the Blue Bell company ended up paying $19.35 million in penalties, settlements, etc. Only Chipotle has had to pay a food safety penalty that was larger ($25 million in 2020). Yet, despite the severity of this recall, Blue Bell remains among the most popular ice cream brands. A company's worst nightmare is to have to recall all of its products, but that's exactly what happened to Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams in 2015. The Nebraska Department of Agriculture uncovered Listeria while sampling ice cream products at the production facility. Luckily, the company was able to enact a recall before anyone became ill from tainted products. All told the company destroyed over half a million pounds of ice cream containers and ice cream sandwiches, as well as containers of sorbet and frozen yogurt. Additionally, the company closed all its scoop shops so that it could find the source of the infection, eradicate it, and ensure that it was only offering the public untainted ice cream. Unfortunately, just a few weeks after the company thought it had found the machine that was the source of the Listeria outbreak, the company had to stop production again when it realized the Listeria wasn't gone. Luckily, Jeni's had been testing every single batch of ice cream to make sure no Listeria got out of the plant because it didn't want to be the source of a deadly nightmare like Blue Bell. After finding Listeria in a batch that was tested, the company disassembled and cleaned its machines again to ensure it had eliminated every last trace of the Listeria from its plant. While the debacle cost the company somewhere around $2.5 million, at least it didn't cost any lives. Schwan's 1994 ice cream recall is the oldest one on our list, and it's the one that made the most people sick. It's also the only one that involved Salmonella infection. The Salmonella-tainted ice cream is estimated to have sickened a whopping 224,000 people with Salmonella Enteritidis. 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