Another listeria scare prompts a supermarket chain to voluntarily recall its products.
Publix Super Markets Inc. recalled its Wheatberry Salad, along with the Publix Sweet and Salty Almond Bar, last May 5 due to a nationwide listeria concern. Both food products have been pulled off the shelf, the company announced.
Involved in the recall of Wheatberry Salad were sunflower seeds that may be tainted with Listeria monocytogenes, which can cause serious and sometimes deadly bacterial infection in children, the elderly and the immunocompromised.
While it can lead to only short-term symptoms such as severe headache and high fever in healthy people, it could cause miscarriage and stillbirths in pregnant women.
“No illnesses have been reported to date in connection with the Wheatberry Salad,” assured Publix Media and Community Relations Director Maria Brous in their statement.
This salad was available in all retail locations of the chain in Florida, Alabama, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina.
In addition to the two Publix recalls, there were around 100 packaged snacks also affected by the listeria concern linked to sunflower kernels.
A majority of the products were made by TreeHouse Foods Inc., the same company that created the recalled Almond Bars, while two are manufactured by Canadian company SunOpta Inc., headquartered in Minnesota in the U.S.
See the full list of affected products, which were distributed nationwide through retail stores. No illnesses too have been reported so far, according to the recall announcement.
Consumers who have bought the recalled products may return them to their local stores for a full refund.
Just last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced an ongoing multistate listeria outbreak that made eight people sick and forced a recall of 358 different frozen vegetables and fruits.
The eight cases were documented in the states of California, Maryland and Washington from September 2013 to just last March. Only recently, however, the outbreak was traced to frozen veggie products from CRF Frozen Foods of Pasco, Washington — all sold under different brand names.
