Cheerios: 1.8 Million Boxes Recalled Due To Gluten Risk

About 1.8 million boxes of Cheerios thought to be gluten-free, but mistakenly made of wheat, will now be recalled by General Mills Inc.

It happened due to "sudden new changes of consumer demands", showing just about one percent of the Cheerios annual sales, according to HNGN.

About nine months ago General Mills targeted a new customer profile, with five different types of Cheerios. The first one is the popular Honey Nut Cheerios supposed to be gluten-free.

They made it to the shelves in July, General Mills said, according to the Wall Street Journal.

President of General Mills' Cereal Division, Jim Murphy, gave his version of how it happened and why they should recall it.

"Our Lodi production facility lost rail service for a time and our gluten-free oat flour was being offloaded from rail cars to trucks for delivery to our facility on the dates in question. In an isolated incident involving purely human error, wheat flour was inadvertently introduced into our gluten-free oat flour system at Lodi," Murphy said on the General Mills blog, reports the Inquisitr

The Cheerios Twitter account also announced and alerted their consumers.

The company's spokeswoman pointed out that many illness reports had been put up online by consumers. Two complaints were sent directly to General Mills after consumers fell ill.

Consumers were asked to check out the "better if used by" code on the packaging of Honey Nut Cheerios boxes that have dates between July 12-25, 2016, bearing code "LD" which signify which production plant it came from, according to ABC News