By Jack Phillips
Green organic kiwifruit is now under recall in 14 states due to a potentially deadly listeria contamination, according to an announcement posted on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website.
David Oppenheimer and Company said it is voluntarily recalling some of its clamshell packages of kiwi after testing found Listeria monocytogenes in some of the products, according to the notice. The bacteria can cause listeriosis, a sometimes severe and fatal infection.
The company traced the contamination back to two grower lots in New Zealand. The recalled kiwi, repackaged locally for sale in 1-pound clear plastic clamshells has the Zespri brand and UPC code 8 18849 02009 3, and it has fruit with a sticker featuring a GTIN bar code of 9400 9552.
The recalled products were shipped between June 14, 2023, and July 7, 2023, and were sold in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, North Carolina, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
No illnesses have been reported to date in connection to the products, according to the notice. No other products from David Oppenheimer and Company are subject to the recall.
What Is Listeria?
Federal health officials say that listeria is a bacteria that can cause severe or fatal illness in children, the elderly, or individuals with compromised immune systems. Healthy people can suffer short-term problems including a high fever, nausea, stiffness, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and headaches. Among pregnant women, the organism can cause stillbirths and miscarriages.
Individuals who are infected with the bacteria may see symptoms within a few hours to three days after eating contaminated food, according to the FDA’s website. More severe forms can take three days to three months to develop.
“L. monocytogenes is generally transmitted when food is harvested, processed, prepared, packed, transported or stored in environments contaminated with L. monocytogenes. Environments can be contaminated by raw materials, water, soil, and incoming air. Pets can also spread the bacteria in the home environment if they eat food contaminated with L. monocytogenes,” says the FDA’s website.
Despite the warnings, the bacteria appears to be rare. An estimated 1,600 Americans develop listeriosis each year, while about 260 die, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) data.
“Listeria bacteria can survive refrigeration and even freezing. So people who are at higher risk of serious infections should avoid eating the types of food most likely to contain listeria bacteria,” according to the Mayo Clinic’s website. That includes “improperly processed” deli meat products and unpasteurized milk products, it says, while also listing raw vegetables that have been contaminated from manure or soil as a source of infection.
Other Recalls
It comes as ice cream being sold in 19 states was recalled due to a possible listeria contamination. That action centers on Real Kosher brand Soft Serve On The Go, according to a separate FDA notice issued last week.
One person in New York and another individual in Pennsylvania have been sickened after eating the ice cream, officials said. The FDA is now investigating, and Real Kosher said in a notice that it stopped making the ice cream.
“Our highest priority is the safety and well-being of our customers, which is why we have made the decision to recall all Soft Serve on the Go Cups,” the company said in its recall notice. “Soft Serve on the Go Cups are manufactured at their own dedicated facility. No other products are affected by this recall.”
Ice cream cups were sold in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C., according to the notice.
In June, a large number of frozen fruit products were recalled across the United States. Officials linked the contamination to possibly contaminated pineapple, according to the FDA.
![The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is refusing to release the results of autopsies conducted on people who died after getting COVID-19 vaccines. The FDA says it is barred from releasing medical files, but a drug safety advocate says that it could release the autopsies with personal information redacted. The refusal was issued to The Epoch Times, which submitted a Freedom of Information Act for all autopsy reported obtained by the FDA concerning any deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System following COVID-19 vaccination. Reports are lodged with the system when a person experiences an adverse event, or a health issue, after receiving a vaccine. The FDA and other agencies are tasked with investigating the reports. Authorities request and review medical records to vet the reports, including autopsies. The FDA declined to release any reports, even redacted copies. The FDA cited federal law, which enables agencies to withhold information if the agency “reasonably foresees that disclosure would harm an interest protected by an exemption,” with the exemption being “personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” Federal regulations also bar the release of “personnel, medical and similar files the disclosure of which constitutes a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” The Epoch Times has appealed the denial, in addition to the recent denial of results of data analysis of VAERS reports. ‘Easily Be Redacted’ Kim Witczak, a drug safety advocate who advises the FDA as part of the Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee, said that the reports could be released with personal information blacked out. “The personal information could easily be redacted without losing the potential learnings from [the] autopsy,” Witczak told The Epoch Times via email. People make the choice to submit autopsy results to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, Witczak noted. “If someone submits their experience to VAERS they want and expect to have it investigated by the FDA. This includes autopsy reports,” she said. Autopsies are examinations of deceased persons performed to determine the cause of death. “Autopsies can be an important part of postmortem analysis and should be done especially with increased deaths following COVID-19 vaccination,” Witczak said. FDA Responds An FDA spokesperson noted that deaths following COVID-19 vaccination are rare, citing the number of reports made to VAERS. As of Sept. 14, 16,516 reports of death following COVID-19 vaccination have been reported. Approximately 616 million doses have been administered in the United States through September. The spokesperson declined to say whether the FDA would ever release the autopsy results, but pointed to a paper authored by researchers with the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The paper, which has not been peer reviewed, analyzed the approximately 9,800 reports of death to VAERS following COVID-19 vaccination lodged from Dec. 14, 2020, to Nov. 17, 2021. Researchers found that reporting rates were lower than the expected all-cause mortality rates. “Trends in reporting rates reflected known trends in background mortality rates. These findings do not suggest an association between vaccination and overall increased mortality,” the researchers wrote. The researchers noted that prior studies have found that adverse events reported to VAERS are an undercount of the true number of events.](https://www.usnn.news/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/FDA-Withholding-Autopsy-Results-on-People-Who-Died-After-Getting-COVID-19-Vaccines-150x150.jpg "FDA Withholding Autopsy Results on People Who Died After Getting COVID-19 Vaccines | USNN World News")
