The record starts on July 31. By Oct. 24, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counted 11 people sick with the same strain of listeria in four states, and one of them was an infant who did not survive.
The CDC said in a Friday update that the outbreak traces to ready-to-eat meat from Yu Shang Food, Inc. of Spartanburg, South Carolina. Seven of the cases were in California, two in Illinois, and one each in New York and New Jersey. Nine of the 11 were hospitalized. Everyone affected identified as having Asian heritage, the agency said.
The California cases
The dead infant was a twin. The other twin also died, but listeria could not be tied to that death. “Listeria was found in a sample from the mother and from one of the twin infants, but it could not be found in a sample from the other infant,” the CDC update stated. The twins’ mother was pregnant when she fell ill. She recovered. A separate infant, apparently unrelated to the family, also became sick and recovered.
The CDC cautioned that the real total is probably higher. “Some people recover without medical care and are not tested for Listeria,” the agency said.
How the plant was flagged
According to a USDA statement, inspectors pulled contaminated product during a routine visit to the Yu Shang Food plant on Oct. 21. Testing ultimately found Listeria monocytogenes on meat made there. A recall of about 4,500 pounds followed on Nov. 9. On Thursday, the company widened it to more than 72,000 pounds.
The expanded list covers nearly two dozen prepared items, among them braised pork belly in brown sauce, seasoned chicken quarter leg and braised beef shank. Duck, chicken feet and chicken gizzards are also included. The USDA said the affected goods were produced before Oct. 28 and carry the inspection mark “P-46684” or “EST. M46684.” Used-by dates run from Aug. 21-27, 2025. At least four retailers sold them, 99 Ranch Market among them.
Interviews with patients were still under way. Seven said they shopped at markets that stock Yu Shang Food products, in person or online, and two said they ate the company’s chicken. Investigators found that the listeria in every case shared a genetic footprint. “This suggests that people in this outbreak got sick from the same food,” the CDC said.
A Yu Shang Food spokesperson told NBC News the company stopped operating and issued the recall after the USDA found contamination in a monthly routine sample. “We have been working very closely with the food safety agency to prevent listeria contamination in the future by implementing good sanitation practices in production,” the spokesperson said.
Customers holding the products were told to throw them out. The CDC added that any freezer or refrigerator that held them should be cleaned with care.
A crowded year for listeria
Listeria ranks third among causes of death from foodborne illness in the United States, the CDC said. Older adults, pregnant women, newborns and people with weak immune systems face the greatest danger.
This was not the year’s only large recall. Producer BrucePac pulled more than 11 million pounds of ready-to-eat meat and poultry a month earlier. The Boar’s Head deli meat outbreak, which killed 10 people across 19 states over the summer, was declared over the same Thursday as the Yu Shang expansion.
Abby Snyder, a professor of microbial food safety at Cornell University, told Harvest Public Media that better surveillance explains why small outbreaks now get noticed. “We’re just in a period where several seem to have happened in a relatively short succession in the past few months,” she said.
Sources
- Infant dies, 10 sickened amid listeria outbreak tied to ready-to-eat meat
- Infant dies and 10 others sick in latest listeria outbreak tied to ready-to-eat meat
