Pasco, Washington-based CRF Frozen Foods has voluntarily recalled a number of frozen vegetable products out of listeria contamination concerns.
The company announced pulling 15 frozen vegetable items from the market Saturday after routine testing done by state health officials detected the presence of Listeria monocytogenes in organic petite green peas as well as white sweet cut corn.
While no illness has been reported yet, listeria could cause sometimes deadly infection among children, the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems – and can cause miscarriage or stillbirth in pregnant women. In healthy individuals it can lead to high fever, stiffness, severe headache, nausea, abdominal pain, and diarrhea, to name a few symptoms.
According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the affected items were distributed to retailers from Sept. 13, 2015 to March 16 this year in California, Chicago, as well as more than 30 other states in the U.S. and Canada.
Find out the complete list of recalled items.
Customers who bought the recalled items are urged to avoid consuming them, and to return them to the store where they bought them for a refund or discarding.
Last week in Canada, Nature’s Touch recalled its Organic Berry Cherry Blend due to potential Hepatitis A contamination, with the affected product sold in 3.3-pound packages with best before dates up to March 16, 2018. The affected items were sold at Costco warehouse sites in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Quebec.
Earlier this month, the FDA issued a new rule governing transport of food products as part of a bigger campaign to ensure food safety and to implement the Sanitary Food Transportation Act of 2005.
“[T]his final rule will help to ensure that all those involved in the farm-to-fork continuum are doing their part to ensure that the food products that arrive in our grocery stores are safe to eat,” said FDA deputy commissioner Michael Taylor of the final rule document.
Recommended in 2014, the rule considered [pdf] comments from multiple sectors including the food industry, transportation firms, government agencies, consumer groups, and trading partners worldwide.
Photo: Francis Bijl | Flickr
