All 12 (100%) ill people reported being hospitalized, and one person from MI died as a result of listeriosis.
Advertisement
Meanwhile, Dole informed the CDC on Thursday that it has halted production at the Springfield plant, and that all packaged salads made in that facility will be pulled from store shelves. Dole Spinach salad was recalled in 2012 after a sample tested positive for salmonella. The carriers are packaged salads from a Dole Food Company facility in Springfield, Ohio. The CDC said it linked the outbreak to the Dole salads this month after OH agriculture officials found listeria in a bag bought at a retail location.
The salads were sold under the brand names Dole, Fresh Selections, Simple Truth, Marketside, The Little Salad Bar and President’s Choice.
All the outbreak cases were reported after July 5, 2015, the CDC said. The investigation kicked off in September 2015, however the source of the outbreak remained unclear until this January.
Listeria is a type of bacteria that can be found in food, soil, plants, sewage and other places in nature, and eating food with Listeria on it can cause a serious disease, called listeriosis. All others are presumed safe by the CDC as they came from a different facility.
Listeria can be life-threatening, and can cause muscle aches, fever and gastrointestinal symptoms. Other people at high risk include newborns, pregnant women and the elderly. Unaffected product codes begin with the letters B and N. Dole named 23 states affected by the withdrawal: Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin. The disease is especially unsafe for pregnant women, since it can lead to miscarriage, stillbirth, premature delivery, or infection of a newborn.
Listeria can be a notoriously hard food-borne illness to track because the incubation period is between 3 days and 70 days.
Advertisement
Approximately, 260 deaths occur due to listeriosis out of the estimated 1,600 people infected with the bacteria annually in the US, according to the CDC, as per ABC News.
