Kickstart: An 'unpleasant' recall

Whether it's fair or not, it's easy to mock a slice of processed American cheese as the culinary equivalent of eating plastic. Unfortunately, that description is a little too real now.

Kraft Heinz has just ordered a voluntary recall of 83,000 cases of individually wrapped Kraft Singles American cheese slices because a "temporary issue developed on one of our wrapping machines" resulted in the potential for a piece of plastic to remain on the cheese after it is removed from its overwrap, the Chicago-based company said in a Sept. 19 news release.

"If the film sticks to the slice and is not removed, it could be unpleasant and potentially cause a gagging or choking hazard," it added.

The issue was discovered after the company received several consumer complaints. There were no injuries or serious health issues reported.

"Kraft Heinz has fixed the machine that wrapped the affected slices and all other processing machines have been thoroughly inspected," it said and apologized "for this inconvenience."

The recall covered 1-pound and 3-pound packs.

Kraft Heinz isn't the only consumer products company with a mess to clean up. The Clorox Co. is still trying to fully restart its production lines after a cyberattack took out its order processing system in August.

Clorox — a maker of items such as bleach, wipes and trash bags — said it hopes to fully transition to regular automated ordering systems the week of Sept. 25. In early September, the company said it had implemented "an interim solution for manually processing and shipping orders across our manufacturing facilities."

Oakland, Calif.-based Clorox has not identified which products were impacted by the attack on its IT operations. The company has some in-house production for its bottles and produces Glad-brand storage and trash bags.

"We expect the ramp-up to full production to occur over time but do not yet have an estimate for how long it will take to resume fully normalized operations," it said Sept. 18.

It says it has not determined the extent of its financial losses related to the attack.

This doesn't have to do specifically with plastics, but a brief word of warning for people with big business meetings planned for Oct. 4.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will have a nationwide test of its emergency broadcasting system on all cellphones at 2:20 p.m. Eastern time.

The wireless emergency alert will be only the second nationwide alert to all cell phones, FEMA officials said.

"For consumers, the message that appears on their phones will read: 'THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed,'" FEMA noted.