Manda Packing Company has expanded its recall of cooked meat and deli products to include about 468,000 pounds of food. The products include roast beef, ham, turkey breast, tasso pork, ham shanks, hog head cheese, corned beef, and pastrami for possible Listeria monocytogenes contamination.
You can see the long list of recalled products at the USDA web site. The products include many different brands of each of the different meats, including Christiana, Thompsons, Leblancs, S&W, Chef Master, Rouses, LA Pride, Four Star, Cajun Prize, Scariano, and Chef Master, among others. Each package of meat has the establishment number “EST. 8746A” or “P-8746A” inside the USDA mark of inspection. The products may have been sliced at retail delis; if they were, they will not have the packing information. They were shipped for distribution, for sale at retail, and to retail deli stores in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.
Additional samples from additional production dates have returned positive for Listeria. There have been no reports of illnesses associated with these products to date. But it’s possible that the deli slicing machines have been contaminated with Listeria if the products are contaminated.
Listeriosis can take up to 70 days to manifest symptoms. If you ate any of these products, monitor yourself for the symptoms, which include high fever, severe headache, neck stiffness, and nausea, for the next two months. Pregnant women may only have very mild flu-like symptoms, but listeriosis can cause miscarriage and stillbirth. For questions and more information, call Josh Yarborough, Director of Quality Assurance and Food Safety, at 225-344-7636, ext. 59.
