If you’ve bought cooked ham or pepperoni lately, you may want to read more. There is a significant recall of cooked meat due to possible listeria contamination.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service, Alexander and Hornung, a company within Perdue Premium Meat Company, Inc., initiated a recall of more than 230,000 pounds of ham and pepperoni products. fully cooked that were shipped to retail stores nationwide after product sampling detected the presence of the listeria bacteria.
Some of the retail stores that received the products include several Big Y supermarkets, a popular chain here in the Northeast. Listeria can cause a serious infection that kills about 260 Americans a year.
The Big Y themselves issued a statement saying:
Alexander & Hornung is recalling approximately 234,391 pounds of fully cooked ham and pepperoni products that may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. This recall includes random weight packages of Big Y bone-in ham fillets.
The 17 products included in the recall are sold under the Alexander & Hornung, Big Y, Butcher Boy, Five Star, Food Club, Garrett Valley Farms, Niman Ranch, Open Nature and Wellshire brands. See the full list of products by clicking here.
According to the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), eating food contaminated with L. monocytogenes It can cause listeriosis, which is more serious than listeria and is sometimes fatal. Symptoms include confusion, seizures, fever, headaches, loss of balance, muscle aches, and a stiff neck.
As of yet, there have been no confirmed reports of adverse reactions due to consumption of these products, however FSIS’s concern is that some of these products may be in consumers’ refrigerators or freezers.
If you have any of the products that are on the recall list, FSIS urges you not to consume them. Discard them immediately or return them to the place of purchase.
For more information on product recalls, visit the FSIS website here.
LOOK: History of food from the year you were born
LOOK: Look how Christmas was the year you were born
WATCH: Here Are 30 Foods That Are Poisonous To Dogs
To prepare for a possible incident, always have your veterinarian’s phone number handy, along with an after-hours clinic that you can call in an emergency. The ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center also has a hotline you can call (888) 426-4435 as advice.
However, even with all these remedies, the best cure for food poisoning is to prevent it in the first place. To give you an idea of which human foods can be dangerous, Stacker has put together a slide show of 30 common foods to avoid. Take a look to see if there are any that surprise you.
LOOK: The best Christmas toys of the year you were born
.