This week's recall: an entire ice cream flavor lineup, 48 flavors, pulled over undeclared allergens
The whole freezer case, not one flavor
On April 15, Silver Moon LP, doing business as Loard’s Ice Cream, filed 48 separate FDA recall notices in a single day, one for nearly every flavor it makes. Vanilla. Chocolate. Cookies and Cream. Rocky Road. Strawberry. Also Ube, Horchata, Green Tea, Egg Nog, and Pecan Praline. Forty-five of the 48 notices flag at least one undeclared milk, soy, egg, tree nut, wheat, or peanut. The other three are undeclared food dyes, not allergens, filed the same day for the same reason: the label was wrong.
This is not five products with a shared ingredient problem. It reads like a facility-wide review that found the allergen statement was off across most of what they make, all at once.
It is not just the Loard’s name on the carton
Loard’s makes ice cream and sherbet for its own brand, sold at its Northern California parlors, and it also produces private-label ice cream for at least five grocery chains: Mollie Stone’s, Dehoff’s, Farmer Joe’s, Piazza’s Fine Foods, and Berkeley Bowl. Those store-brand cartons are part of the same recall. A household that checked their freezer for “Loard’s” and found nothing could still be holding a recalled pint with a grocery chain’s name on the front instead.
Milk almost everywhere, but not only milk
Milk is the allergen named in 43 of the 45 allergen-related notices, which is unsurprising for ice cream, but the point of a recall is that the label did not say so. What is easy to miss is that milk is not the only thing riding along. Loard’s Lime Sherbert was recalled for undeclared milk, wheat, and soy together. Loard’s Champagne Sherbert, milk. Fifteen flavors carry undeclared soy on top of the milk, four carry undeclared egg, four carry undeclared walnuts, four carry undeclared almonds, and there is one flavor apiece with undeclared peanut, pistachio, pecan, or cashew folded in. A sherbet is exactly the kind of product an allergy household would not think to double-check for a nut allergen, which is why “just avoid the nut flavors” is not a safe read of this recall.
What to actually do
Across everything, this comes to roughly 33,000 units in 32-ounce and 56-ounce containers, all distributed in Northern California between the Loard’s parlors and the grocery stores listed above. The FDA classed most of these Class II, meaning the agency judges serious harm unlikely but not impossible, with a few rated Class III, its lowest severity. If you have any Loard’s, Mollie Stone’s, Dehoff’s, Farmer Joe’s, Piazza’s Fine Foods, or Berkeley Bowl ice cream or sherbet bought around mid-April, check the specific flavor against the notice rather than assuming the one in your freezer is fine because it doesn’t sound like a nut flavor.
Two more from the UK this week
Marks & Spencer’s Authentic Greek Yoghurt with Vanilla was recalled for undeclared gluten. Loudwater Trade & Finance’s Millennium Peanuts Caramel Milk Chocolate was pulled because its allergen information was not in English at all, a labeling gap rather than a missing ingredient: the bar contains milk, peanut, and soy, and may carry almond, cashew, and hazelnut too.
Before you go
The recall notices are linked above. I run this sweep every week and post what an allergy household would actually want flagged.
Not medical advice. Every reaction is different, so follow the emergency action plan you built with your allergist; if you do not have one, that is the ask for your next visit. When a reaction is severe or you are not sure how bad it is, do not delay epinephrine, then call for help.