Dessicated bug found in my flour

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Chopstix

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Joined
Oct 3, 2004
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Hello to all! I have been inactive in DC for quite some time now. I used to live in Bangkok when I posted to DC last. Now I'm based in Singapore and still cooking and baking.

A few days ago while making a pie crust, I found a dried-up winged insect in my Pillsbury flour. I had just newly opened the flour bag which I bought at a local grocery here. The product is imported from the USA. I am keeping the flour in its original packaging and I am keeping the insect as evidence (it broke into two during handling). I dare not use the rest of the flour in case there are insect eggs.

I tried to complain on the Pillsbury website but it does not accept complaints from outside the USA :ohmy:

I contacted the store I bought it from and they want to take the flour and insect for testing. However when I asked if they were going to remove the product from store shelves or do some form of recall, they never got back to me anymore. (Remember that flours are produced in huge batches so this contamination may well cover a lot of this product out there.) I returned to the store and didn't see the same product anymore on their store shelves. I had asked them to copy me on their complaint to Pillsbury but they have gone silent on this as well.

Since I prefer to complain directly to Pillsbury and get answers from them myself, I thought it may be better if I post this complaint in DC and maybe somebody here can kindly complain on my behalf somehow? I thought of posting this complaint on Facebook but that's not my style...

I am attaching the photos. Kindly let me know if anyone would like to help me make the complaint. You can PM me for my personal details in case Pillsbury wished to make contact.

Many thanks!
 

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If you've ever eaten any food made from grains, like bread, oatmeal, cereal and even beer, you've eaten bugs and plenty of them.

I lived and worked on a farm for many years and I can tell you a truck load of wheat, or oats, or barley, has probably a garbage can's worth of bugs in it. Some crawl, some jump, some stink, some fly, some make weird noises. There are green ones, red ones, yellow ones, black ones and irredescent ones. Some have stingers, some have pinchers, some have horns, some spit juice. Many are pregnant or are carrying their young on them. Some of them have just gone to the bathroom and others are ready to. None of them get removed. They all remain mixed in.

Obviously we don't die from them, but how does that make you feel? Enjoy.



I copied and pasted this from another page. It is absolutely true. I raised wheat and I have hauled wheat to different flour mills around the mid west. The most recognizable one is Martha Gooch. Every single load of wheat has bugs and bug parts in it. I dont know how they get them out. Alot of the bugs are smaller then the wheat.

This bug Chopstix found obviously got in after the milling. I wonder how many made it in before.
 
While I would find this kinda gross, I wouldn't be surprised. I'm actually quite impressed that they keep these things out of our food most of the time. I remember finding more bugs in food as a kid, especially breakfast cereal, usually alive, fresh from the grocery store. Now cereal has an expiration date on it, and is packaged in plastic.
 
I agree that we all eat critters and critter by-products in our food all the time. But if I found a bug that big in my flour, I'd be grossed out and throw out the whole bag.
 
.... I remember finding more bugs in food as a kid, especially breakfast cereal, usually alive, fresh from the grocery store. .

Me too but in all fairness my eyesight was better when I was a kid ;)

:ermm:
 
If you are not too sqeamish it's interesting to read the FDA standards.
Good grief! The FDA Food Defect Action Level booklet is... eyeopening? Terrifying? :ohmy:

I can see how such contaminants are unavoidable though. I'm sure we eat a lot more "bug filth and excreta" (to quote the aforementioned document) than we imagine.
 
Thanks to all who replied. The J.M. Smucker company (probably the owner of Pillsbury flour) has already contacted me for more information. I will wait for their findings and action.

The reason I find the flour with insect unacceptable is because my husband is in the food manufacturing business (specializing in milk powders) and while he fully understands the nature of agriculture-based raw materials, an insect in the final product is not to be tolerated at all. There are all kinds of food safety standards that companies are held up to. He was the one who encouraged me to make the complaint.
 
Many years ago we had in Boston a conductor for the Boston Pops by the name of Arthur Fiedler. He was asked what was the most difficult thing he found about conducting the orchestra outside in the shell.

"All the bugs I have to eat on a hot summer night. Maybe I will learn to keep my mouth shut some day. But I just figure it is just extra protein in my diet. I am constantly getting flying bugs in my mouth, so I just swallow them."

He lived to a ripe old age. :angel:
 
Thanks to all who replied. The J.M. Smucker company (probably the owner of Pillsbury flour) has already contacted me for more information. I will wait for their findings and action.

The reason I find the flour with insect unacceptable is because my husband is in the food manufacturing business (specializing in milk powders) and while he fully understands the nature of agriculture-based raw materials, an insect in the final product is not to be tolerated at all. There are all kinds of food safety standards that companies are held up to. He was the one who encouraged me to make the complaint.

My training in dietetics made me aware that there are certain legal amounts of non foods that are allowed in food products.

this from Wikipedia..
The Food Defect Action Levels

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The Food Defect Action Levels: Levels of natural or unavoidable defects in foods that present no health hazards for humans is a publication of the United States Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition[1] detailing acceptable levels of food contamination from sources such as maggots, thrips, insect fragments, "foreign matter", mold, rodent hairs, and insect and mammalian feces.
The publication details the acceptable amounts of contaminants on a per food basis, listing both the defect source (pre-harvest infection, processing infestation, processing contamination, etc.) and significance (aesthetic, potential health hazard, mouth/tooth injury, etc.). For example, the limit of insect contaminants allowed in canned or frozen peaches is specified as: "In 12 1-pound cans or equivalent, one or more larvae and/or larval fragments whose aggregate length exceeds 5 mm."[1]
The Food Defect Action Levels was first published in 1995. A printed version of the publication may be obtained by written request to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).



And as a long time bicycle rider, I have inadvertently eaten many bugs, to no ill effect.
 
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Admittedly, the bug parts allowed in flour are not usually as large as the ones Chopstix found.
 
I sympathize with OP, but it is pretty hard to remove the eggs (which hatch) from many packaged items. I remember my mom taking out some powdered sugar to make frosting and finding dried insects inside. That stuck in my memory to this day. But it isn't been a complete deal breaker when the occasional need for sweets arises.
 
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