The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Tuesday that it is investigating a listeria outbreak of Fresh Express packaged salads, and is warning consumers not to eat or serve the products.
Instead, the agency is telling people to discard the products and thoroughly disinfect the surfaces where the products may have come into contact.
Fresh Express urged consumers not to eat, sell, or serve a list of salad bags with the codes Z324 to Z350 printed on the package.
The company said the recalled salad bags were distributed to retailers across the Northeast and Midwest in the U.S., including in New Jersey, as well as Canada.
As a result of the outbreak, 10 people have become sickened, 10 more people have fallen ill enough to be hospitalized, and one person has died across eight different states.
Fresh Express announced a recall on Monday of some of its packaged salads produced in the company’s Streamwood, Ill., facility because they might be contaminated with the bacteria listeria monocytogenes.
The company first issued the recall after the Michigan Department of Agriculture randomly took a sample of one of the Fresh Express salad products and found that the Fresh Express Sweet Hearts salad mix tested positive for listeria.
“Fresh Express immediately halted all production at the Streamwood facility and initiated a complete sanitation review,” the company said in a statement. “Fresh Express has already been in contact with retailers who received the recalled items, instructing them to remove them from store shelves and stop any further shipments to stores from distribution centers and other inventories.”
According to the FDA, the illnesses stretch back to July 2016, with the most recent illness occurring this October.
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