Salmonella outbreak linked to cucumbers sickens 45 people across 18 US states
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Companies including Target have issued recalls for products with cucumbers that may be contaminated.
PHOTO: UNSPLASH
Isabella Kwai
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NEW YORK - A salmonella outbreak linked to cucumbers has sickened at least 45 people across 18 US states, health officials said on May 30, and they warned that the number of people infected was likely higher.
Companies including Target have issued recalls for products with cucumbers that may be contaminated.
The cases have been reported across the Midwest and East Coast, with nearly a third of them in Georgia and Florida, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC said 16 people had been hospitalised. Salmonella can cause diarrhoea, fever, stomach cramps and dehydration.
Health officials have linked the outbreak to Bedner Growers, a cucumber grower based in Boynton Beach, Florida, that sells to wholesale distributors and directly to consumers.
Potentially contaminated cucumbers, distributed between April 29 and May 19, were sold widely to stores and restaurants, the CDC said.
Eight of the sick people had been on cruise ships in the week before they fell ill, all departing from ports in Florida, the CDC said.
In the past month, about a dozen companies, including Bedner Growers and its distributors, have issued recalls of products containing cucumbers.
Bedner sold cucumbers to consumers at three Bedner’s Farm Fresh Markets locations in Florida, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
Target said on its website that it had sold sushi and salads with the potentially contaminated cucumbers.
Other businesses, according to a list from the FDA, used the cucumbers in sandwiches, salsa or made-to-order submarine sandwiches.
“The recalled cucumbers should no longer be for sale,” the CDC said, but it advised people eating outside the home over the next week to ask whether the cucumbers used were from Bedner Growers or Fresh Start Produce Sales, a distributor.
“If you have cucumbers at home and can’t tell where they are from, throw them away,” the agency said.
Bedner Growers said in a statement that salmonella is “a serious health concern” and that the company is “extremely concerned about the safety of the products it grows.”
The company said that its voluntary recall was initiated “in an abundance of caution and out of deep respect for the public health.”
“Safety first,” the statement added. “By taking these steps, we want to assure the public that we want to continue to earn your trust.”
The recall did not involve cucumbers sold after May 14 at Bedner Growers’ markets, or any other of its products, according to the company.
Cases in the current outbreak emerged from April 2 to May 10, although it can take several weeks to identify whether a sick person is part of an outbreak, the CDC said.
Salmonella causes an estimated 1.3 million infections each year in the United States, according to the agency.
Bedner Growers was one of two farms linked to a salmonella outbreak last summer that led to 551 cases across 34 states and the District of Columbia and hospitalised 155 people.
Investigators from the FDA at the time found a strain of salmonella in a sample of canal water at the grower’s farm that matched the strain found in infected people.
Other types of salmonella were detected in soil and water samples, it said.
Health officials said on May 30 that the FDA had collected environmental samples in April at Bedner Farms as a follow-up to the 2024 outbreak, and that the samples contained a strain of salmonella linked to the current outbreak.
The strain was also found in a sample of cucumbers from Bedner Growers at a distribution centre in Pennsylvania. NYTIMES
