GIVE UP THOSE DELI SALADS, SPREADS AND DIPS!

If you are a regular eater of ready-to-eat foods – salads, dips, spreads, cold cuts or whatever, you may want to think again, particularly if you are older or pregnant. The past 10 days of food recalls in the U.S. and Canada once again highlight how unsafe they can be.

The main risk with such foods is that nasty bacterium Listeria monocytogenes (although others do pop up as well). It is particularly tricky for two reasons. First, it can affect people so differently, and secondly, there is often a very long time between the time you eat that Listeria-contaminated salad or dip or whatever, and the time you begin to feel ill. I have written so much about this bacterium in previous posts, so won’t repeat it here.

Reser's Fine Foods of Beaverton, Oregon and Boston Salads and Prepared Foods of Boston, Massachusetts, are two of the several ready-to-eat food producers who have had to recently recall hundreds of their products. As often happens, the recalls kept expanding over the days, with more and more products suspected of being unsafe as investigators took a closer look.

And there is such a huge variety. Take the Reser’s recall. I went through their lists of ready-to-eat foods under many different brand names as well as their own and was amazed at the variety they offer.

Take just one of my local retailers – Safeway. It alone had some 30 different delicious-sounding salmon, crab and other dips and macaroni, potato, ham, chicken and other salads and slaws recalled.

So you thought some hard-working employee back there behind the Safeway Deli counter made those salads you just bought? Unfortunately not. We are living in the age of industrialized food production. They came from some huge food plant such as one of Reser’s which in turn, sources its ingredients from several suppliers, which may get theirs from still others. Who knows how many miles those prepared foods travelled, and how many days they took to reach your store.

Yes, these hundreds of recalled Reser’s products all over the U.S. and Canada apparently all came from their Topeka, Kansas salad manufacturing facility. How far is that from your home?

To your good health,

TSF

MORE ONION-TRIGGERED FOOD RECALLS FOR TRADER JOE'S

Yes, I said there would be more food recalls because of Listeria-contaminated chopped-up onions (see previous two posts and the next). And yes, I was right. The new product recalls include more problems for Trader Joe's, which has already had to recall its barbeque chicken salads because of these onions.

Now Simmering Soup, Inc., of Atlanta, GA is initiating a recall of Trader Joe’s brand of Salsa and Balela because the products contain these suspect onions. They were shipped between July 25 -26, 2012 to Trader Joe’s stores in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Southern region of Virginia.

This recall also gives us yet another example of how our industrialized food production system works. Some farmer (or farmers) obviously grew these onions. Then they were sent to Gills Onions, LLC, in California for processing, bagging and further distribution. In this case FreshPoint Atlanta, bought whole peeled onions from Gills. They then processed them into diced onions. These diced onions were then purchased by Simmering Soup Atlanta which made them into the Salsa and Balela products for sale at Trader Joe's stores in 6 states.

Are you sure you want to keep on eating those processed products?

To your good health,

TSF (off to drive past Trader Joe's to shop at the farmers' market)

UPDATE: An additional onion-linked recall has been announced for Trader Joe's stores in Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington of Trader Joe's Roasted Butternut Squash, Red Quinoa and Wheatberry Salad. It was made by Huxtable's Kitchen.

A RECALL OF GRAPE TOMATOES

An industrialized food supply, such as the one in the United States, certainly makes food safety more difficult. Take the presently ongoing recall of grape tomatoes. It's Salmonella bacteria again (there are 30 posts on Salmonella already on this blog). Here are the facts so far - and I would guess that this recall will expand in the days to come.

It all started with a farm based in Estero, Florida, USA. They sent their grape tomatoes to Six L Packing Company, another Florida-based enterprise, that packages and distributes food products. According to Hoover's, Six-L packs and ships over 15 million boxes of tomatoes a year to other food companies and retailers in California, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, New Jersey, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia, as well as Canada. In New York, a U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector found that some of these tomatoes tested positive for Salmonella bacteria. As often happens, the test results came a little late. At least two of Six L's clients had already sent them to our stores.

Taylor Farms Pacific Inc., which is based in Tracy, California, had used them to produce some 60 kinds of fresh salads. They were being sold in plastic trays at deli counters in key supermarkets including Albertsons, Raley's, Safeway, Savemart, Sam's Club and Walmart stores across the West and some Midwestern United States. (See post May 3).

Wait - it gets weirder. Mastronardi Produce of Kingsville, Ontario (yes, that's Canada), also received some of the Six L grape tomatoes and is selling them under labels of "Aldi From the Vine (where else would they come from?) Grape Tomatoes", "Sunset Grape Tomatoes", and "Trader Joe's Splendido Little Tomatoes" all in neat little clamshell packages. And where are these being sold? Well, back we come across the border to the U.S. The Trader Joe's ones are being sold only in Eastern Seaboard and Midwest Locations. The others are sold in several other states (IL, MI, WI, FL, MA, MD, NJ, MD, OH, TX, WI). Did you notice, by the way, that some of those cute little grape tomatoes came right back to Florida again - presumably, from Ontario, Canada, under a new name?

Now comes my punchline. On April 26 - just about a week ago - representatives of Mastronardi Produce/SUNSET® were in Washington DC to accept the prestigious Dupont Food Quality Award for 2010. This award honors a North American business for outstanding food safety initiatives (There is a nice photo on their website of the award presentation). Mastronardi Produce won because “all aspects of the business appear to be aligned toward producing high quality, safe food within a sustainable environment.”

Hmm..Bad luck Mastronardi. You had better change the source for your grape tomatoes if you want to get the award next year.

TSF