Whole Foods Expands Raw Cheese Recall After Listeria Deaths

(RTTNews) - Whole Foods has issued an expansion to a recent recall of Vultro Creamery cheese products potentially contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. The contaminated products made from unpasteurized raw milk have been linked two deaths and four illnesses.

Vulto Creamery has expanded the recall to include all lots for four additional cheeses which include Andes, Blue Blais, Hamden & Walton Umber. Vulto Creamery had earlier issued recall of Heinennellie, Miranda,, Willowemoc, Ouleout.

Listeria monocytogenes is a bacterium which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, pregnant women and others with weakened immune systems. Although healthy individuals may suffer only short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea. Listeria infection can cause miscarriages, stillbirths and fetal infection among pregnant women.

Whole Foods had previously pulled the cheese from nine stores in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine and New York but the reported illnesses or casualties. However, Listeria contamination were not linked to cheese bought at Whole Foods.

The raw milk cheeses from Vulto Creamery were distributed nationwide, with most being sold at retail locations in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic States, California, Chicago Illinois, Portland Oregon and Washington, D.C. Distribution.