By Maria Cendejas

On Feb 17, the recently safety feature added to the bottles of grape flavors liquid infants Tylenol has had problems and has driven McNeil Consumer Healthcare to recall 574,000 bottles of the product, according to med page today.

The company owned by Johnson & Johnson said a small number of complaints from customers reported difficulty with a system intended to give exact dosing of the product. 

"In some cases, the flow restrictor was pushed into the bottle when inserting the syringe," McNeil said.

The system was developed in response to calls from drug safety advocates and the Food and Drug Administration to provide more exact dosing systems for liquid children's medications.

McNeil said it had not received any reports of adverse events resulting from the problem, and the recall is only at the level of wholesale and retail distribution.

"Consumers can continue to use Infants' Tylenol provided the flow restrictor at the top of the bottle remains in place," the company said.

The gaffe is the latest to beset McNeil's over-the-counter products. In the beginning of 2009 problems with odors affecting numerous products. It was traced to a preservative used in imported wooden shipping pallets. 

In 2010, a major McNeil manufacturing plant in Fort Washington, Pa. was shut down because of  these incidents. 

There have been a series of recalls of Tylenol due to various problems.  But these recalls do not seem to have caused the company too much of any trouble at least not from the federal drug regulator FDA.