Since 2012, salads made by Dole have been recalled for Listeria four times and for Salmonella once. The current recall, for all salads with product codes beginning with the letter “A”, sold under the following names: Dole, Fresh Selections, Simple Truth, Marketside, The Little Salad Bar, and President’s Choice.
The letter “A’ in the product code currently indicates that the salads were made at the company’s plant in Springfield, Ohio which has been closed for two weeks. Tests performed in November 2015 by the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s Consumer Protection Laboratory, confirmed the presence of Listeria monocytogenes in a bag of salad produced at the plant. The Public Health Agency of Canada and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have performed tests confirming that the strain in the salad matches the strain cultured from those sickened.
In March 2014, Dole issued a recall for possible Listeria contamination in salads sold under the brand names Dole, Fresh Selections, The Little Salad Bar and Marketside (all brands that are currently under recall). All had codes with the letter “A” or the letter “B.”
In October 2012, a Dole salad recall for possible Listeria was for Dole salads with product codes that included the letter “A” or the letter “B.”
In June 2012, a Dole salad recall for possible Listeria includes the letter “B” in some codes.
And in April 2012, a Dole salad recall for possible Salmonella contamination includes the product codes “A” and “B.”
At the time of publication, Food Poisoning Bulletin was unable to obtain confirmation from health authorities that the letter “A” in each recalled product code dating back to 2012 indicates the Springfield plant or determine the identity of the plant represented by the letter “B.” There will be more information on that to come.
