The owner of Jack & The Green Sprouts Inc. is recalling the company’s alfalfa and alfalfa onion sprouts in response to state and federal investigations into an E. coli O157:NM outbreak.
At least seven people in Minnesota and two in Wisconsin have been confirmed with the outbreak strain. Two of the Minnesota victims required hospitalization, according to state officials. Joe Mahoney, owner of the River Falls, WI, sprout company did not respond Wednesday to specific questions posed by Food Safety News. Mahoney emailed a copy of a recall statement posted on the Jack & The Green Sprouts Facebook page Thursday. The recall notice is almost identical to a public warning issued by the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) Wednesday, except the recall states: “The testing completed to date has not identified the source and the contamination is unknown.” The recall statement and the health department warning both indicate Mahoney does not know for sure where his company’s sprouts were distributed. “Jack & The Green Sprouts … distributes alfalfa sprouts to states in the upper Midwest and possibly other states,” according to the Facebook recall statement and health warning. “The seven Minnesota cases and at least one of the Wisconsin cases were exposed to implicated alfalfa sprouts from a variety of locations, including grocery/cooperative stores, restaurants, salad bars and commercial food service.” (To sign up for a free subscription to Food Safety News, click here.)
