Nearly 10 Million Pounds of Ready-to-Eat Meat Products Were Just Recalled Due to Listeria Concerns
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If you’ve been planning to dig into a supermarket chicken salad or other packaged dish for lunch or dinner, you may want to listen up: Nearly 10 million pounds of ready-to-eat (RTE) meat products have been recalled due to potential contamination with bacteria—but not before the items made their way to a bunch of major retailers, including 7-Eleven, Wegmans, Kroger, Amazon Kitchen, and Trader Joe’s.
On October 9, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced that BrucePac, a company based in Durant, Oklahoma, was recalling approximately 9,986,245 pounds of ready-to-eat meat and poultry items. Per the announcement, the recall was initiated when routine product testing by the FSIS turned up Listeria monocytogenes bacteria in products made with BrucePac’s RTE chicken.
The affected products bear the establishment number “51205” or “P-51205,” and were manufactured from June 19 to October 8, according to FSIS. Shipped nationwide, they reached prominent distributors, and some may still be available for use or sale—maybe even at your nearest grocery store.
Following the initial announcement, the FDA released a 326-page list of all the affected products spanning wraps, enchiladas, salad bowls, salad kits, and pasta dishes. Some of the recalled items include:
7-Eleven’s Chicken Caesar Salad
Amazon Kitchen’s Chicken & Pepper Jack Wrap
Taylor Farms’ Cobb Salad With Chicken & Bacon
Giant Eagle’s Southwest Style Salad Bowl With Chicken
H-E-B’s Southwest Pasta Salad With Chicken
Meijer’s Ranch Salad with Chicken and Bacon
Save Mart’s Chicken and Rice With Teriyaki Sauce
Trader Joe’s Harvest Salad With Grilled Chicken
Trader Joe’s Curried White Chicken Deli Salad
Wegmans’s Chef Salad Bowl
Michelina’s Chicken Lo Mein
Good & Gather’s Cilantro Avocado Salad
Kroger’s BLT Salad With Chicken Salad Kit For One
Amazon Fresh’s Fiesta Salad With Chicken
Fusia (Aldi’s) Garlic Chicken Bowl
You can find the complete list here, along with photos of their labels—the USDA recommends you check it frequently, since new products could be added.
If you have any of the recalled products in your fridge, throw them away or return them to the place of purchase, per the FSIS announcement. That’s because eating food contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes can be serious: It can cause listeriosis, an infection especially dangerous to adults 65 and older, immunocompromised folks, and pregnant people and their newborns. In fact, listeriosis is the third leading cause of death from foodborne illness in the US, killing approximately 260 people every year, according to CDC estimates. Symptoms can include fever, chills, muscle aches, and diarrhea; they can begin as soon as a few days after eating the contaminated food, or as late as 30 days or more after.
No reports of adverse reactions or illnesses linked to the BrucePac recall have been confirmed, according to the USDA. If you have questions about the recall, you can call Jeff Golangco, vice president of business development at BrucePac, at 503-874-3000. And as always, if you have any specific concerns about health, contact your health care provider.
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Originally Appeared on SELF