More than 1.5 million bags of different shredded cheeses sold at major retailers, including in California, have been voluntarily recalled due to possible metal contamination, authorities said.

The recall was initiated in early October by Great Lakes Cheese Co., an Ohio-based company, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The voluntary recall covered more than 260,000 cases of shredded cheese, and was prompted by the possibility of metal fragments in the products, an FDA notice said.

The FDA upgraded the recall Monday to “Class II,” meaning the use of or exposure to the identified products can cause temporary or “medically reversible adverse health consequences.”

The FDA’s investigation into the recall is ongoing. In a statement to The Times, Great Lakes Cheese Co. said a supplier of low-moisture part-skim mozzarella cheese “notified us that they were recalling cheese they had supplied to us due to foreign material.”

The company said it immediately isolated the affected raw material in its facilities and removed the packaged goods containing the foreign material.

“We instructed retailers to remove the products from store shelves after the announcement in October,” the statement said. “When we were confident all recalled products had been removed from store shelves, we distributed new product that did not have the potential to contain foreign material and was safe.”

Even though the FDA released its classification of the recall as “Class ll,” the company said its records showed “all product has been fully removed from store shelves.”

Here’s what you need to know:

What cheeses are affected?

The FDA has flagged the following shredded cheese cases as part of the recall:

• 235,000 cases of low-moisture part-skim mozzarella shredded cheese, including the brands: Always Save, Borden, Brookshire’s, Cache Valley Creamery, Chestnut Hill, Coburn Farms, Econo, Food Club, Food Lion, Gold Rush Creamery, Good & Gather, Great Lakes Cheese, Happy Farms by Aldi, H-E-B, Hill Country Fare, Know & Love, Laura Lynn, Lucerne Dairy Farms, Nu Farm, Publix, Schnucks, Simply Go, Sprouts Farmers Market, Stater Bros. Markets and Sunnyside Farms.
• 1,900 cases of Happy Farms by Aldi Italian-style shredded cheese blend.
• More than 15,000 cases of Italian-style shredded cheese blend, including the brands: Brookshire’s, Cache Valley Creamery, Coburn Farms, Great Value, Know & Love, Laura Lynn, Publix, Simply Go and Happy Farms.
• 117 cases of Food Club finely shredded pizza-style four-cheese blend.
• More than 4,000 cases of mozzarella and mild cheddar cheese blend, including the brands: Econo, Food Club, Gold Rush Creamery, Great Value, Laura Lynn and Simply Go.
• More than 4,000 cases of mozzarella and non-smoked provolone cheese, including the brands: Freedom’s Choice, Good & Gather, Great Lakes Cheese and Great Value.
• More than 1,800 cases of Good & Gather mozzarella and parmesan cheese blend.

The products have sell-by dates ranging from January to late March of next year, according to the FDA notice. The agency has a complete list online of the affected products and their UPC codes.

Where were these products sold?

The affected shredded cheese products came in five different varieties and were sold under a host of brand names at Target, Walmart, Aldi and other major retailers across the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

The FDA says they were distributed to 31 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin; as well as Puerto Rico.

What you should do

The FDA did not provide specific instructions for the recalled cheese products. When a product is recalled, the agency’s general guidance is to either return the product to the place of purchase for a refund or throw it away.

If the contaminated food product came into contact with your fridge or counter tops, the FDA recommends cleaning and disinfecting those areas. After cleaning those areas, you should also wash your hands with warm water and soap.

An initiative that would have required California insurers to offer policies to homeowners who fireproof their houses has been withdrawn after the backer of a competing industry measure similarly did so.

The mutually agreed-upon move means the consumer protections offered by California’s landmark Proposition 103 will remain unchanged. The 1988 measure established an elected insurance commissioner with authority to reject insurer requests for rate hikes.

Consumer Watchdog, the Los Angeles advocacy group that proposed the Insurance Policyholder Bill of Rights, acknowledged it didn’t have the money to pursue the ballot measure, even though it said it deserved to become law.

“There is still a huge need for many of the other protections in the ballot measure, including the right to be guaranteed an insurance policy if homeowners meet state wildfire mitigation standards,” the group stated.

Three Consumer Watchdog officials, including founder Harvey Rosenfield — also the author of Proposition 103 — submitted the measure for the November 2026 ballot in September after Elizabeth Hammack, a Roseville, Calif., insurance broker, had submitted her measure.

The broker’s initiative — the California Insurance Market Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2026 — would have allowed insurer premium hikes to take effect before any rate review, though they could be suspended later if the insurance commissioner determines the market is not “reasonably competitive.”

Insurers would have to provide premium credits to policyholders who take steps to reduce fire dangers on their property.

The measure also would have abolished another core element of Proposition 103, by banning payments to “intervenors” such as Consumer Watchdog, which involve themselves in the rate-review process and typically seek to block or reduce increases — a provision that has irked the industry since its inception.

Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara in October proposed his own regulations that would tighten reimbursements and other rules governing intervenors. He contends the process slows legitimate rate hikes while enriching intervernors.

Consumer Watchdog dubbed the decision to withdraw the competing ballot measures an “armistice” and vowed to spend next year building support for a mandate requiring insurers to sell policies in “higher risk areas.”

Hammack, owner of Panorama Insurance Associates, said she met with Consumer Watchdog at the secretary of state’s office in Sacramento on Tuesday to file papers to withdraw the measure, which she thought was given a misleading title and summary for the ballot.

“I wrote this measure to fix what I saw was broken, as an insurance agent and concerned California citizen, and to strengthen oversight, increase transparency, and restore stability to California’s collapsing insurance market,” she said. “Unfortunately, now, California consumers will continue to be burdened by costly outdated regulations.”

The issue over whether insurers should be required to offer policies to homeowners in fire-prone neighborhoods has gained significance over the last several years as many insurers have either dropped customers or stopped writing new policies after a series of catastrophic wildfires.

A plan by Lara to encourage insurers to write such policies by offering them various concessions has so far failed to depopulate the California FAIR Plan, where homeowners can obtain policies when they cannot get them on the regular market.

The Los Angeles-based insurance pool, operated and financially backed by the state’s licensed home insurers, offers limited policies that typically cost more than those offered by commercial insurers.

The plan’s active policies grew 93% from September 2021 to September 2024, and then grew an additional 39% in the next 12 months. As of September, the plan had about 625,000 active dwelling policies, exposing it to about $647 billion of risk.