The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has now identified 17 victims who have been infected with Salmonella Stanley from cheese sols by The Cultured Kitchen in Sacramento, California. According to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), at least three of those victims has been hospitalized so far.
The CDPH has also issued a consumer alert warning consumers not to eat The Cultured Kitchen’s cashew cheese products (of which there are six flavors), which come in a series of round tubs.
The Cultured Kitchen, for its part, issued a voluntary recall on December 31, 2013 of its cashew cheese products. Those products are set to expire on or before April 19, 2014. The recall has been sent to natural food retailers in Northern California and Northern Nevada, and to Sacramento Valley and San Francisco Bay area farmers markets in California and Reno, Nevada.
According to the CDPH, at least two samples of The Cultured Kitchen’s cashew cheese, which is a non-dairy product raw cashew product, tested positive for salmonella. The first was an opened consumer sample of smoked cheddar cashew cheese, while the second sample was taken from fermenting cashews collected at The Cultured Kitchen’s production facility. The first sample tested positive for Salmonella Stanley, the outbreak strain, while the second tested positive for Salmonella Weltevreden, an unrelated strain of salmonella.
The voluntary recall includes all varieties of cashew “cheese” products manufactured by The Cultured Kitchen in Sacramento that have an expiration date of April 19, 2014 or before. These include the following 6 flavors and UPC codes:
- Herb flavored cashew cheese: 794504922714
- Smoked Cheddar flavored cashew cheese: 736211709134
- Pepper Jack flavored cashew cheese: 794504922615
- Habañero Cilantro Lime flavored cashew cheese: 794504922813
- Pesto or Basil Pesto flavored cashew cheese: 794504851120
- White Cheddar flavored cashew cheese: 794504924015
According to national food poisoning lawyer Ron Simon, “the California Department of Public Health is leading this investigation, and will issue its final report in the coming months. We look forward to reviewing this report and, hopefully, finding out where the food production and handling of The Cultured Kitchen’s cashew cheese failed in order to prevent such an outbreak in the future.”
