The sick person lede was buried, again, and I didn’t realize from a CFIA press release someone had gotten listerosis from eating Clic brand cheese and/or butter in Canada.

That’s how government types roll.

Worse, the expanded recall issued yesterday was a month after an initial limited recall, yet product was still sitting on shelves.

Canadian Food Safety Inspection Agency (CFIA) recall specialist Garfield Balsom told FoodQualityNews.com, “During a review of the company’s voluntary recall it was discovered that several products had been missed. The manufacturer has ceased production at its facilities and the CFIA working with them to make sure other products manufactured by the company are safe to consume.”

Did the one identified individual get sick from consuming Clic products that were previously recalled? In the original Nov. 11, 2011 recall notice, no one was sick.

The following cheese products, bearing establishment number 1874, and any Best Before dates up to and including those listed below, are affected by this alert:

Brand Product Size UPC Last Best Before date
Clic Moujadalé 300 – 400 g None 11 MAR 2012
Clic Riviera 300 – 400 g None 11 FEB 2012
Clic Tressé 300 – 400 g None 11 NOV 2012
Clic Vachekaval 300 – 400 g None 11 MAR 2012

The following dairy products bear establishment number 1874. These products have a four digit lot code. If the last 2 digits of the lot code are 45 or lower, e.g. xx-45, xx-44, etc, they are affected by this alert:

Brand Product Size UPC
Clic Desi Butter Ghee 454 g (1 lbs) None
Clic Desi Butter Ghee 907 g (2 lbs) None

These products have been distributed in Quebec and Ontario. These products may also have been distributed to other provinces.
 

Pig’s ears are apparently used in meals around the world, such as Oreja de Cerdo in Spain (right); in North America, pig’s ears are most often used as dog treats.

Thousands of packages of cooked pigs ears produced in Spain and distributed in southern France have been recalled after testing positive for Listeria monocytogenes.

Our French friend Albert Amgar provided the link to the AFP story, and Amy translated on the way home from New Zealand this morning.

The Roussillon Salaisons company which makes pork products and prepared meals in Perpignan initiated their own recall of the products in question from the concerned stores. In cases where the product had already been sold, it is requesting that people who still have the product not eat it and either destroy it or return it for a refund.

Those who might have eaten the incriminated product and who have symptoms such as fever, with or without headache, are encouraged to consult their doctor and indicate what they have eaten.

Pregnant women must be especially attentive to these symptoms, as should be immune-depressed and elderly people.

The implicated products are 3200 vacuum-packed bags of plain cooked pigs ears and Galician style cooked pigs ears, both from the Régal Catalan brand. They were sold from July 4 in a few dozen Leader Price stores in Aquitaine, Midi-Pyrénées, Languedoc-Roussillon and Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur, the company explained.

They come from two imported lots from Spain with the numbers 07072011and a best by date of 5 October 2011, and 27062011, best by date 25 September 2011. Roussillon Salaisons insisted that the products were made by the Spanish firm Carnes Esman and not by Roussillon Salaisons itself. Roussillon Salaison emphasized that it does make certain pork products but in this case it only sold the pigs ears.

Listeria was discovered during a routine test undertaken by a Leader Price store.
Roussillon Salaisons was alerted to the problem Friday and said that they immediately asked all the stores to pull the product from their shelves and to put up a poster to notify consumers. But the health authorities asked that the company additionally alert consumers through the media, the company explained.

On July 29, 2011, U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) issued a public health alert due to concerns about illnesses caused by Salmonella Heidelberg that may be associated with use and consumption of ground turkey produced by a Cargill plant in Arkansas.

On August 3, Cargill recalled 36 million pounds of ground turkey that had been linked to the outbreak through microbiological testing. By Aug. 18, 2011, 111 persons infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella Heidelberg were identified in 31 states. The outbreak had been apparently going on for months, and no one knew the source.

But that didn’t stop Cargill from restarting the Arkansas plant on Aug. 16, and establishing a blue-ribbon science advisory panel on Aug. 26. Steve Willardsen, president of Cargill’s Wichita-based turkey processing business said at the time, the company has implemented the most aggressive salmonella monitoring and testing program in the poultry industry.

Guess they found something.

A couple of hours ago, Cargill Meat Solutions Corporation of Springdale, Ark. recalled approximately 185,000 pounds of ground turkey products that may be contaminated with a strain of Salmonella Heidelberg.

USDA-FSIS said, “The strain of SalmonellaHeidelberg in question is identical to that of an outbreak of Salmonellosis that resulted in an August 3, 2011 recall of ground turkey products. Although a sample tested positive for the outbreak related strain ofSalmonella, including the identical XbaI and BlnI PFGE patterns matching the August 3 outbreak strain, at this time, neither FSIS nor the plant is aware of any illnesses associated with product from the above dates. An FSIS incident investigation team collected samples at the establishment following the previous recall. Today's recall occurred after a product sample collected on August 24 tested positive for the outbreak strain ofSalmonella Heidelberg. The firm is recalling product from August 30 based on pending positive match samples. The products subject to recall are derived from bone-in parts.”

The products subject to recall include:

Fresh Ground Turkey Chubs
• 16 oz. (1 lb.) chubs of Fresh HEB Ground Turkey 85/15 with Use or Freeze by Dates of 09/12/2011, 09/13/2011, 09/19/2011 and 09/20/2011
• 16 oz. (1 lb.) chubs of Honeysuckle White 85/15 Fresh Ground Turkey with Use or Freeze by Dates of 09/19/2011, 09/20/2011 and 09/21/2011

Fresh Ground Turkey Trays
• 19.2 oz. (1.2 lb.) trays of Honeysuckle White 85/15 Ground Turkey with Use or Freeze by Dates of 09/10/2011 and 09/12/2011
• 48.0 oz. (3 lb.) trays of Kroger Ground Turkey Fresh 85/15 with Use or Freeze by Dates of 09/17/2011, 09/18/2011 and 09/19/2011
• 48.0 oz. (3 lbs.) trays of Honeysuckle White 85/15 Ground Turkey Family Pack with Use or Freeze by Dates of 09/11/2011, 09/12/2011, 09/13/2011, 09/15/2011, 09/17/2011 and 09/18/2011
• 16 oz. (1 lb.) trays of Honeysuckle White 85/15 Ground Turkey with a Use or Freeze by Date of 09/11/2011

Fresh Ground Turkey Patties
• 16.0 oz. (1 lb.) trays of Honeysuckle White Ground Turkey Patties with a Use or Freeze by Date of 09/18/2011
16 oz. (1 lb.) trays of Kroger Ground Seasoned Turkey Patties Fresh 85/15 with a Use or Freeze by Date of 09/17/2011The products subject to recall today bear the establishment number "P-963" inside the USDA mark of inspection. The products were produced on August 23, 24, 30 and 31 of this year.

The massive ground turkey recall that Cargill Inc. announced this week is raising questions about whether federal food safety regulators should have moved faster to limit a nationwide salmonella outbreak.

I told Mike Hughlett and David Shaffer of Minnesota Star Tribune that, "Part of the problem is the absence of clear guidelines about when to go public."

Doug Powell, a food safety expert at Kansas State University who felt that the recall process was slow with the ground turkey, said food regulators appeared to become more conservative after a big salmonella outbreak in 2008. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration first linked it to tomatoes, only to find out later that jalapeno peppers were the most likely cause. The tomato industry cried foul after it got crushed financially.

The recall that Minnetonka-based Cargill announced late Wednesday covers 36 million pounds of ground turkey, one of the biggest U.S. meat recalls. It's linked to a particularly virulent strain of salmonella that has infected 78 people in 26 states and led to one death.

The recall involves ground turkey produced as early as February, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture had indications going back to at least July 20 that the culprit might be a Cargill plant in Arkansas.

The timing of the recall highlights a dilemma for the nation's food regulators over when to go public with recall information. Go too late, and public health could suffer. Go too early and make a mistake, and a corporation or industry's reputation could unduly suffer.

In Sacramento County, Calif., where a woman older than 65 died in June from the latest outbreak, the county's health officer brought up another factor bedeviling food regulators these days: budget cutting.

Dr. Glennah Trochet said her department now responds more slowly to outbreaks, sometimes delaying investigations a week or two. Public health workers often aren't available to interview possible victims. She suspects other agencies face the same constraints. "If you want rapid response, you need to have the resources to do rapid response," Trochet said.

This is something I hear from public health types across the country; it’s almost amazing outbreaks get tracked down at all given the fiscal mess at the state and local levels.

The salmonella outbreak linked to Cargill ground turkey began in early March. Chris Braden, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's director of foodborne diseases, said on Thursday that it was a slowly building outbreak in the beginning.

After recognizing an "unusual clustering" of Salmonella Heidelberg cases, the CDC began investigating on May 23, Braden said. About the same time, routine surveillance by a federal food monitoring system found the same strain of Salmonella Heidelberg in ground turkey in stores.

The monitoring service found four positive samples, one each in April, May, June and July, Braden said. Those four samples were traced to Cargill's Arkansas plant, he said, though he didn't elaborate on when.

David Goldman, a public health administrator in the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, told reporters that by July 20 or 21, the agency had traced back two cases from the salmonella outbreak to Cargill's Arkansas plant. A third traceback to the same plant was confirmed last week.

Late Friday, the USDA put out a public warning about salmonella dangers in ground turkey, without naming the suspected source. Recalls are often initiated when food regulators tell a company they suspect it's the source of an outbreak.