The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, or FSIS, announced on Saturday that Tyson Foods Inc. is recalling its pre-cooked chicken products due to possible Listeria contamination.
A number of frozen, fully cooked chicken products that were produced between December 26, 2020 and April 13, 2021 are affected, including diced roasted chicken, grilled chicken breast strips and chicken wings.
The full list of recalled products is available here. You can also view the labels of the recalled products here.
The recall affects close to 8.5 million pounds of Tyson’s ready-to-eat products.
“Listeriosis can cause fever, muscle aches, headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance and convulsions sometimes preceded by diarrhea or other gastrointestinal symptoms,” according to FSIS.
“In pregnant women, the infection can cause miscarriages, stillbirths, premature delivery or life-threatening infection of the newborn. In addition, serious and sometimes fatal infections in older adults and persons with weakened immune systems.”
Older adults, people with weakened immune systems and pregnant women and their newborns are considered at a higher risk for Listeriosis.
Authorities recommend that anyone in the higher-risk groups who are experiencing flu-like symptoms within two months of eating possibly contaminated food should seek medical care. Tell your health care provider that you may have eaten contaminated meat.
Treatment is typically a course of antibiotics.
The regulatory agency learned of two people who were ill with listeriosis on June 9. FSIS worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state public health partners to find that there was evidence linking Listeria illnesses to pre-cooked chicken produced by Tyson Foods Inc.
During the investigation, the agency was able to identify three separate cases of listeriosis, one of whom died.
Any person with food safety questions can call the toll-free USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline at 1-888-MPHotline (1-888-674-6854) from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. EST Monday through Friday.
For those that need to report a problem with a meat, poultry or egg product, the online Electronic Consumer Complaint Monitoring System can be found at https://foodcomplaint.fsis.usda.gov/eCCF/.