A widely popular beverage has been removed from shelves at Walmart stores in Mississippi and 24 other states.
Walmart has issued a recall for just under 10,000 cases of its eight-ounce Great Value apple juice bottles sold in six-packs due to the threat of harmful levels of arsenic. The recalled apple juice cases have a universal product code of 0-78742-29655-5 and a “best if used by” date of December 28, 2024.
The move to take the juices off shelves by the thousands comes after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an initial warning on August 15 and later gave the product a more urgent Classification II recall on Friday. The second notification from the FDA signals that a product runs the risk of causing temporary health issues, but is not likely to be the source of any major or irreversible medical conditions.
According to the federal regulatory agency, the apple juices were found to have arsenic levels of 13.2 parts per billion — 3.2 parts more than what is considered safe by the FDA.
Arsenic is a naturally occurring, semimetallic element that is toxic and widely distributed in the earth’s crust, air, water, and soil. Testing of the element’s presence in food and beverage products is routine because elevated levels of arsenic can cause diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal pain, muscle cramps, and other pains.
Walmart removed the potentially tainted apple juice from stores in the following areas:
- Alabama
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- District of Columbia
- Florida
- Georgia
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Kentucky
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Mississippi
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New York
- North Carolina
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania
- Puerto Rico
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Vermont
- Virginia
- West Virginia.
