Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has once again issued a wide-ranging recall of consumer health products two years after the company was plagued by a series of withdrawals due to safety issues.
The company’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare Division is in the midst of a voluntarily recall of 200,000 bottles of the children’s cough drop concentrated Motrin Infants’ Drops Original Berry Flavor in the US.
The recall affects three product lots of the cough drop and is due to tiny plastic particles being identified in a fourth product lot of the drops that was not released to market.
According to McNeil, the particles originated in a shipment from a third party supplier of ibuprofen, which is the active ingredient in Motrin.
“Out of an abundance of caution, McNeil is voluntarily recalling the three lots released to the market made with the same batch of active ingredient,” said the company.
The recall is being conducted with the knowledge of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and retailers are asked to remove any affected lots from store shelves and for consumers to dispose of any products they have.
The news is a reminder of a troubled time for J&J from 2010 to 2011 when it was hit by several major recalls of consumer products that led to changes at senior management for the division.
One of the first recalls was in early 2010 for the children’s medicine Tylenol after an FDA investigation uncovered thick dust, grime and contaminated ingredients at the plant Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, plant in which they were manufactured.
This was followed by recalls of other products produced at the plant, which was shut down for a period while improvements were carried out.
J&J also issued other recalls around the same time for other reasons, withdrawing 9.3 million bottles of Tylenol Multi-Symptom cold treatments because they failed to list the alcohol content on the front label.
At the height of the troubles in September 2010, J&J’s worldwide chairman for its consumer group Colleen Goggins announced she would step down from the company.
The company later brought in Denice Torres, a former Lilly executive, to head its McNeil Consumer Healthcare division, which has managed to recover from its previous problems.