New York spice importer recalls cinnamon seasoning after lead found in state testing

A New York spice importer has pulled a ground cinnamon seasoning from store shelves in six states after state health testing found elevated levels of lead in the product, the latest entry in a string of cinnamon recalls that has stretched on for nearly three years without a single federal safety limit to enforce.

Galil Importing Corp. of Hauppauge, New York, announced on Thursday that it is recalling its Lior Cinnamon Ground Seasoning after a sample tested by the Maryland Department of Health came back with elevated lead readings, according to a recall notice posted by the Food and Drug Administration. The company said it has stopped shipping the product, told retailers to pull remaining inventory, and opened an investigation into its cinnamon supplier.

The numbers

The recalled item is the 90-gram size of Lior Cinnamon Ground Seasoning, sold under UPC 794711005484 and marked with lot code GAP11304 on the side of the container, beneath the ingredient line. According to the FDA notice, the product was distributed to retail stores, grocery stores, delis and supermarkets in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida and Illinois between November 18, 2025, and September 7, 2026 — a shipping window of nearly ten months. The FDA notice does not disclose the specific lead concentration Maryland regulators measured, and Galil has not reported any illnesses tied to the product. The company is telling customers to throw the seasoning away or bring it back to the store where they bought it for a refund.

How we got here

The recall lands amid a wider, slow-burning food-safety story that began in the fall of 2023, when apple cinnamon fruit puree pouches sold under the WanaBana brand, along with private-label versions at Schnucks and Weis stores, were pulled from shelves after children who ate them turned up with dangerously high blood lead levels. Investigators eventually traced the contamination to a single cinnamon processor in Ecuador and found lead concentrations in the pouches thousands of times above safe limits for food intended for infants and toddlers. By the time the outbreak investigation was closed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had logged 566 confirmed, probable and suspected cases of elevated blood lead levels across 44 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

That episode prompted the FDA and state laboratories to start routinely testing ground cinnamon sold at retail, using a cooperative funding arrangement that lets states like Maryland collect and analyze their own samples and report results back to federal regulators. The screening has turned up a steady drip of separate, unrelated products with lead levels regulators consider unacceptable, even though the contamination has nothing to do with the original Ecuadorian supplier. The FDA's running public health alert on ground cinnamon has been updated repeatedly as new brands turn up, and Food Safety News has tracked the list growing in stages over the past year. TODAY reported that more than a dozen brands have been flagged in that alert alone, separate from formal recalls like Galil's.

Underpinning all of it is a regulatory gap: there is no federal limit on how much lead a spice is allowed to contain. New York is the only state with a published action level for heavy metals in spices, a threshold of 1 part per million that triggers a Class II recall when exceeded — the same benchmark cited when Consumer Reports tested three dozen cinnamon products in 2024 and found roughly one in three exceeded it. Earlier this year, New York's agriculture department proposed tightening that threshold further, to 0.21 parts per million, arguing the existing bar was set too high to catch meaningfully contaminated products before they reach kitchens.

Who is affected

The recall is limited, geographically, to the six states where Galil distributed Lior Cinnamon Ground Seasoning, and to shoppers who bought the product in the roughly ten-month window before the recall. But the health stakes fall hardest on young children and pregnant women. Lead accumulates in the body and does not break down with cooking, and even modest, repeated exposure — of the kind that might come from a spice used regularly rather than a single contaminated pouch — can affect a child's developing brain. The recall was one of several flagged in Thursday's roundup of food alerts, alongside a separate allergy alert for undeclared lobster in a pasta product and a lead advisory affecting a different spice brand, underscoring how frequently these notices now surface.

"While the health effects of chromium are difficult to predict in this scenario, we know that there is no safe level of lead," the CDC has said in describing the health risks tied to lead-contaminated cinnamon products.

Reaction and what happens next

Galil's recall notice states plainly what it wants customers to do: "Consumers should not consume the product and should either discard it or return it to the place of purchase for a refund." The company says it has "begun a supplier investigation, and implemented enhanced testing and supplier verification measures to prevent a recurrence," language consistent with how importers have responded to earlier cinnamon recalls, most of which have not identified a single common source the way the 2023 outbreak eventually did.

No members of Congress, consumer advocacy groups or medical associations had issued statements on the Galil recall specifically as of Thursday night, reflecting its scale — a single lot from one importer, not a multistate outbreak. But the recall adds to a lengthening record that food-safety researchers and pediatricians have pointed to as evidence that voluntary recalls and patchwork state testing are not catching contaminated spices before they reach store shelves.

For now, consumers with the affected lot code are being told to check their pantries and either discard the product or seek a refund, and parents of young children who may have eaten it are advised to talk to a pediatrician about blood lead testing, which most insurance plans and Medicaid cover. The FDA has not indicated whether it expects to expand the recall to other Galil products or other retailers, and the agency's broader surveillance of the spice aisle, run jointly with state health departments, is expected to continue generating similar notices as more samples are tested.