Sargento Cheese added to Decade-old deadly Listeria Outbreak.

Just last month, Rizo-López Foods Inc., a product supplier of cheese manufacturer/distributor Sargento, was forced to recall a large mount of its product (see below -including about 60 cheese products). That recall came after an announcement that listeria had been detected in Rizo-López cheese products. As is common in outbreaks, initial recalls are allowed by more and more potentially contaminated product recalls, in this case, Sargento Cheese that incorporated Rizo-López cheese. Sargento issued its recall, at lest initially, limiting the scope of the recall to a small portion of its product supply. Sargento apparently also severed all ties with the company and recalled products received from Rizo-López – none of them according to Sargento, were sold under the Sargento name (brand) to individual consumers.

According to a Sargento statement:

Today, March 7, Sargento Foods was made aware of inaccurate news circulating around a product recall. The Wisconsin-based company has confirmed that Sargento Branded Product is not affected. 

This news stemmed from California-based Rizo-Lopez Foods, Inc.’s recall on February 5 of its Cotija cheese due to a related listeria outbreak. Sargento immediately investigated the situation last month and determined that the recall impacted a limited amount of its Food Service and Ingredients products. This recall did not impact Sargento-branded products.

Sargento has claimed that no retail-level consumer sales ere impacted, only sales to food distributors, and that it has recalled all products made on the same line as impacted cheese. The announcement did not clearly define or state what happened to cheese sold to distributors, adding that, however, 10,000 packets of affected cotija, parmesan, Swiss, asiago, Monterey Jack, white cheddar, cheddar, a nacho and taco blend, Italian cheese blend, taco cheese blend, and queso quesadilla cheese had been pulled from store shelves.

The outbreak spans nearly a decade old now, with at least 26 identified individuals in 11 states getting sick between 2017 and the present. At least two of those people have died, including on Californian in 2017 and on Texan in 2020 .

In this ever-expanding recall, Rizo-López Foods Inc. issued a recall of about 60 cheese products in February:

RECALLED PRODUCTS:

SOURCE Rizo-López Foods, Inc.