Trader Joe’s has just announced the recall of raw cashews in over 30 states after fears that they are tainted with a deadly bacteria.
According to a release on Trader Joes’ website, the company was alerted by their supplier that one specific lot of the nuts were possibly contaminated. Products with the barcode number 00505154 should be avoided, the company said. The “best before” date on the nuts in question was 0.17.2016TF4.
It is unclear if anyone has gotten sick from eating the nuts yet, but the company is not taking any chances. All bags with the label “Trader Joe’s Raw Cashew Pieces” have been taken off of the store’s shelves and sales of the product have been halted until further notice. Customers were urged to either throw out any of the nuts they may have purchased or contact the company for a refund.
Trader Joe’s says that the nuts were shipped to a wide range of states including Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, the District of Columbia, and Wisconsin.
The recall began when Trader Joe’s was notified by their parent company Heritage International (USA) Inc. about the possibility of a salmonella contamination reported by the FDA. The agency announced that after a routine testing in a contract laboratory, scientists detected the presence of salmonella in one shipment of raw cashews.
Subsequent FDA tests on other lots of cashews turned up negative for salmonella, so there is a large chance that the outbreak can be contained before anyone becomes sick.
Information about the cashew recall from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration can be found here.
Daniel J. Brown
Daniel J. Brown (Editor-in-Chief) is a recently retired data analyst who gets a kick out of reading and writing the news. He enjoys good music, great food, and sports, with a slant towards Southern college football, basketball and professional baseball.