Wakefern recalls ShopRite-brand organic applesauce after mold toxin exceeds safety limit

Wakefern Food Corp., the New Jersey-based cooperative that operates ShopRite and several other Northeast grocery banners, is recalling a single lot of Wholesome Pantry Organic Unsweetened Apple Sauce after routine federal testing found levels of a mold-produced toxin above the government's safety limit. The recall notice was posted to the Food and Drug Administration's website on September 22.

The affected product is sold in 23-ounce plastic jars carrying UPC code 04119005677 and a best-by date of June 16, 2027. No other Wholesome Pantry items, sizes or dates are included in the recall. Wakefern distributed the jars through its ShopRite, Price Rite Marketplace, The Fresh Grocer, Gourmet Garage and Fairway Market banners. Wakefern describes itself as the largest retailer-owned cooperative in the United States, with 45 member companies operating more than 380 stores across nine Northeastern states, the same footprint the company says the recalled applesauce reached. No illnesses have been reported.

What was found, and why it matters

The contaminant is patulin, a toxin produced by Penicillium expansum and related molds that colonize bruised or decaying apples, a condition plant pathologists call blue mold rot. When damaged fruit is pressed into juice or pureed into sauce without being sorted out first, the toxin carries into the finished product. According to NBC News's report on the recall, the FDA says that at elevated levels, patulin can cause nausea and vomiting and may also damage DNA in some cells in the body.

The FDA does not allow apple juice, apple juice concentrate or apple-juice-containing foods to be sold if they test at or above 50 parts per billion of patulin, a threshold spelled out in the agency's compliance policy guide on patulin adulteration. Wakefern has not disclosed the specific reading that triggered the recall, saying only that it exceeded the federal action level and fell short of the company's own quality standards.

Detecting patulin at those concentrations requires laboratory instruments sensitive enough to isolate a single compound from a complex fruit matrix. A 2024 study published in the peer-reviewed journal Toxins describes a robotic liquid-chromatography and mass-spectrometry method built specifically to screen apple juice and apple-derived products for patulin against that same 50-ppb federal limit — the kind of routine surveillance testing the FDA credits with catching the ShopRite-brand jars before they were linked to any reported illness.

Not an isolated hazard

Patulin contamination has surfaced in the packaged-apple aisle before. In the spring of 2025, S. Martinelli & Company recalled roughly 7,234 cases, or more than 170,000 bottles, of its apple juice after a lot tested positive for elevated patulin, a recall the FDA classified as Class II, meaning the health risk was considered temporary or medically reversible rather than life-threatening. That recall, like the current one, stemmed from routine agency monitoring rather than from reported illnesses, as CBS News reported at the time. Because pasteurization does not destroy patulin — only fermentation reliably breaks it down — heat treatment during processing cannot be relied on to remove it once fruit is already contaminated. That leaves sorting out bruised and rotting apples before pressing or pureeing as the primary line of defense, backed up by the kind of finished-product testing that flagged the Wholesome Pantry jars.

Who is affected and what happens next

The recall reaches only shoppers who bought the specific jar, UPC and date combination at one of Wakefern's five affected banners. A company spokesperson said the response for those customers is straightforward.

"Customers who purchased the recalled product can return it to the store for an immediate refund or replacement," Maureen Gillespie, a Wakefern Food Corp. spokesperson, said in the recall notice.

Shoppers who have a matching jar are advised not to eat it. Wakefern has set up a dedicated customer-service line, 1-800-ShopRite (1-800-746-7748), staffed weekdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and weekends from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., to handle refund and replacement requests, according to HealthDay's account of the recall.

The episode underscores that an organic label and a mold-toxin recall are not contradictory: organic certification governs pesticide and fertilizer use during growing, not the fungal decay that can set in on individual pieces of fruit after harvest. Bruised or aging apples can develop blue mold rot regardless of how they were farmed, and if enough contaminated fruit ends up in a single production run, the resulting sauce or juice can exceed federal limits even though the surrounding crop remains unaffected. Routine FDA sampling, rather than consumer complaints or illness reports, remains the primary way these contamination events are caught, as was also true in the Martinelli's case last year.