Don’t cut, bake, or serve recalled cheeses this holiday season.
This advice comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which recently issued a food safety alert regarding a listeria outbreak linked to brie, baked brie, and Camembert made by Old English Cheese and sold under multiple brand names, including Whole Foods.
The alert serves as a reminder for physicians to be on the lookout for symptoms related to listeria contamination. As a result, six people – including one in Texas – had become ill as of early October, and five were hospitalized. No deaths have been reported.
Listeria can cause mild intestinal illness, such as vomiting and diarrhea, which usually starts within 24 hours after eating contaminated food and typically lasts one to three days, according to CDC. Listeria also can cause more invasive illness – with symptoms including fever, diarrhea, fatigue, muscle aches, confusion, loss of balance, and convulsions, among others – between one and four weeks after eating contaminated food.
Healthy people rarely become ill from listeria, but the bacterium can cause severe infections of the bloodstream or brain in people 65 and older and those who are immunocompromised. While listeria infections usually are mild in pregnant women, they can cause severe diseases in the fetus or newborn, CDC says.
Because people infected with listeria may take weeks to develop symptoms, the infection can prove difficult for physicians to diagnose, and detecting it usually requires a lab test to confirm. Listeriosis, a serious infection caused by eating listeria-contaminated food, is a notifiable condition, and physicians must report cases to their local or regional health department within one week, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. More information is available on CDC’s listeria page for health professionals and laboratories.
Old Europe Cheese announced a voluntary recall of its brie and Camembert cheese on Sept. 30, citing possible contamination with listeria. Recalled products include those with best-by dates from Sept. 28 through Dec. 14 and are sold under multiple brand names. A full list of recalled products can be found in the company’s original and expanded recall announcements.
Emma Freer
Associate Editor
(512) 370-1383