The giant makers of chocolate implemented a recall of their Mars and Snickers from over 55 countries after a complaint from a customer about the presence of red plastic in one of them on January 8, 2016.
Mars was founded in 1911 and is a family owned business. They have annual global sales of around $US33 billion. They have been operating in 74 countries and have employed nearly 18,400 people in Europe alone.
The Veghel factory to which the complaint was traced back was opened in the year 1963 and around 1200 people work there. This is the first ever a time for Mars to recall products manufactured in its Veghel factory since its foundation.
The recall will affect the Milky Way Minis and some boxes of celebrations. It has affected the European countries the worst and its effect extends up to Vietnam and Sri Lanka, according to BBC News.
"We are not aware at this stage of it affecting products brought into Australia by Mars chocolate Australia and it does not affect any of the products made by us at our facility in Ballarat, Victoria," said the Company while delivering a statement, according to Reuters.
They also added that there is a possibility for the affected product to have reached the duty-free retailers through some third party without the company's knowledge.
Eline Bjveld, Mars corporate affairs coordinator for the Netherlands said, "As far as we know there are 55 countries involved".
She didn't let out the whole list though. She further said that the recall is only in the Netherland for the Mars factory in Veghel and it does not apply to the US.
Even though she was not sure of the exact number of chocolates produced each day she mentioned that at least 4 million items are being recalled.
Bjveld added, "We are currently investigating exactly on what's happened, but we cannot be sure that this red piece of plastic isn't in any other of our products from the production line".
Mostly the products with best before date in the time gap between June 19, 2016 and January 8, 2017 are being recalled.
