Walmart’s Fruit Cocktail Recall Is Class II. The FDA Also Says There Is No Safe Level of Lead

The recall paperwork for Walmart’s Great Value fruit cocktail carries two official sentences that don’t sound like they belong on the same page. The FDA classified the recall Class II, which means the cans “may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences.” The same agency says there is no safe level of lead.

Both sentences are true at once, because they answer different questions. The Class II label isn’t a grade on lead. It’s a grade on the odds. The FDA’s three classes measure probability times severity of harm from this product, not the hazard of the contaminant inside it.

That distinction is where the second half of the Class II definition matters, and it’s the half nobody quotes. A Class II recall covers products that may cause temporary or medically reversible harm — or where “the probability of serious adverse health consequences is remote.” Lead’s danger to small children, the damage to developing brains, the IQ and learning effects, lives in that clause. The label doesn’t call the lead harmless. It says the agency judged serious harm from these cans unlikely.

The grade also changes what the agency does next. For food recalls, the classification sets how fast the FDA verifies the recall is working: within 3 days for Class I, within 5 days for Class II. Class I is “reasonable probability” of serious harm or death; Class III is not likely to cause harm at all. The letters are a triage system, and this recall landed in the middle tier.

Pacific Coast Producers initiated the recall on October 1. The FDA classified it on October 20. Nineteen days. That gap isn’t a delay in pulling cans — it’s the difference between the firm’s action and the agency’s. Recalls like this are voluntary: the company moves, notifies the FDA, and the agency then reviews the plan, runs its health-hazard assessment, and assigns the class. The recall had been live the entire time the assessment was running. October 20 is when the paperwork caught up.

The paperwork names Pacific Coast Producers, and it isn’t a Walmart division. It’s an agricultural cooperative in Lodi, California, that packs canned fruit and tomatoes under the Del Monte and S&W labels too, and also builds private-label cans for retailers. Great Value doesn’t can fruit. A co-op in the Central Valley does, and one facility’s output ends up on many brands’ shelves.

It has been here before. On September 12 last year, Wegmans pulled three canned fruit products from the same co-op, saying the reason was “lead levels being above regulatory guidance” — including a 15-ounce fruit cocktail, lot 6FCB 02 C2206, best used by September 1, 2027. The Walmart recall is lot 6FCB 04 C2263, best used by September 1, 2027. Same 6FCB fruit-cocktail code family, same can size, same best-by month, thirteen months apart.

The cans themselves: 1,836 cases, 24 cans each, 44,064 in all. UPC 078742369570, lot 6FCB 04 C2263, 15-ounce cans of Great Value Fruit Cocktail in Fruit Juice from Concentrate. They went to Walmart stores in Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wyoming. If one is in your pantry, don’t eat it; no other lots and no other Great Value products are affected. Return it to Walmart or throw it away.

The actual lead levels were never published in the enforcement record. Neither was illness data. The FDA never disclosed whether the cans reached store shelves. Walmart and Pacific Coast Producers didn’t answer USA Today’s request for comment, and The Healthy reported that as of its press time, the recall wasn’t on Walmart’s corporate recall page.

The FDA’s record lists the status as ongoing.

Event ID 100125, recall number H-0167-2027.