The Tyson cooked chicken Listeria monocytogenes outbreak has ended with three people sick, three hospitalized, and one person dead, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The outbreak was declared over as of September 10, 2021.
The patient case count by state is: Delaware (1), and Texas (2). The patient age range was from 60 to 95 years. Illness onset dates ranged from April 6, 2021 to June 5, 2021. All three people were living in long-term care facilities or hospitals when they got sick.
Tyson recalled ready to eat chicken products in relation to this outbreak. The recall was expanded once, and there was one secondary recall for Circle K chicken salads and sandwiches that was also expanded once. The chicken may also have been used to make deli products in various stores around the country. You can see pictures of these recalled items at the USDA web site. In all, almost nine million pounds of chicken products were recalled.
The facilities where the patients lived served many different food items that investigators had to sort through, including meals made with precooked chicken. And the isolates taken from patients were identical, using whole genome sequencing, which suggests that they got sick from eating the same food. Finally, USDA-FSIS found the outbreak strain of Listeria monocytogenes in two samples of fully cooked chicken products during routine product testing.
Food purchase records from the long-term care facility and hospital were collected. The two facilities that produced the fully cooked chicken products had the outbreak strain that was discovered during routine testing. The Tyson facility in Dexter, Missouri produced one of the products that tested positive, supplied product to another firm where a positive sample was collected, and distributed fully cooked chicken products to the long-term care facility and hospital, which were not named.
Please check your freezer and refrigerator carefully to see if you purchased any of the recalled items. The products included chicken strips, pulled chicken, diced chicken, chicken wing sections, fully cooked pizza with chicken, chicken salad sandwiches, chicken wraps, and salads with chicken. The brand names of these recalled items included Tyson, Jet’s Pizza, Casey’s General Store, Marco’s Pizza, Little Caesars, and Circle K.
While these products should no longer be available for sale, they can be kept frozen for a long time. It is possible that some are still in consumers’ freezers. You should clean your refrigerator or freezer with a mild bleach solution after discarding these items to kill any pathogens.
If you or a loved one have been sickened with a Listeria monocytogenes infection after eating recalled Tyson cooked chicken products, please contact our experienced attorneys for help at 1-888-377-8900 or 612-338-0202.
