Bug contamination sparks baby formula recall

Congressional Oversight Panel Chair Elizabeth Warren questions Assistant Treasury Secretary for Financial Stability Herbert Allison (not pictured) on the government's assistance to Citigroup during a hearing in Washington in this March 4, 2010 file photo. Wall Street critic Warren said on September 17, 2010 she accepted the job of setting up a consumer financial protection agency for President Barack Obama and declared that the time for financial "tricks and traps" was over. REUTERS/Richard Clement/Files (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS BUSINESS) (Richard Clement)

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Drugmaker Abbott Laboratories said Wednesday it is recalling millions of containers of its best-selling Similac infant formula that could be contaminated with insect parts.

The voluntary action affects up to 5 million Similac-brand powder formulas sold in the United States, Puerto Rico, Guam and some Caribbean countries. The company said the products may contain a small beetle or larvae, which could cause stomachache and digestion problems.

The recall does not affect any liquid formulas or other Abbott-brand products.

Company spokeswoman Melissa Brotz said Abbott discovered the insects last week in one section of a Michigan manufacturing plant. Abbott manufactures Similac at several U.S. sites.

Brotz said the company has been consulting with the Food and Drug Administration, which determined there was no "immediate health risk" from the contamination.

The affected products were sold in plastic containers and in cans of various sizes, including 8-ounce, 12.4-ounce and 12.9-ounce. The company has set up a Web site, http://similac.com/recall, and a consumer hotline, 800-986-8850. Consumers can enter container lot numbers online to determine whether they have products that are subject to the recall. The products should be returned to Abbott for a refund.

Abbott expects to lose $100 million in connection with the recall.

- Associated Press

l Facebook resolves Canada's privacy concerns: Canada's privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said Wednesday that Facebook has addressed concerns raised a year ago over third-party access to users' information.

A main concern had been that, under the social network's earlier settings, users who wanted to play games or access other outside applications had to make all their information available to third parties. Facebook has since changed its policy to require applications to tell users what parts of their profile they want to access and request permission to do so.

l Warren seeks equal footing for small lenders: Consumer protection special adviser Elizabeth Warren said part of her job will be to create a set of rules not just for consumers, but for small lenders to compete against big banks.

"We've got folks who want to play by a clean set of rules competing against folks who don't," Warren said Wednesday in a speech to a meeting of the National Association of Federal Credit Unions in Washington. "The job of regulation is not only to level the playing field between consumers and the lender, it's often to level the playing field among the lenders so that everybody is competing on a straight-up basis." The speech was her first since President Obama named the Harvard Law professor to help build the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will have broad oversight of consumer credit products, including mortgages and credit cards.

- From news services