A young girl waits for an ice cream at the main square in the town of Klatovy. (Photo : Reuters)
Jeni's ice cream, a Columbus, Ohio-based ice cream manufacturer announced on April 23, Thursday that the company is pulling off all its products sold country wide suspecting Listeria contamination.
The products are being recalled by the splendid ice cream makers as a precautionary measure on the account of random tests by Nebraska Department of Agriculture on one of its products revealing possible Listeria contamination. The company noted that "However, out of an abundance of caution, Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams is taking this voluntary precautionary measure in order to ensure complete consumer safety," according to USA Today.
The ice creams, sorbets and frozen yoghurts produced by the company are sold in 21 stores in Ohio, California, Georgia, Illinois, Tennessee and South Carolina as well as grocery stores and retailers in some states.
Listeria monocytogenes usually cause a type of food-borne illness called listeriosis in older adults, pregnant women, new-borns, and adults with weak immune systems and rarely in healthy adults and children, reported live science. The symptoms of the disease include fever and muscle pain, sometimes accompanied or preceded by diarrhea or other gastrointestinal symptoms. Other symptoms can include confusion, stiff neck, headache, loss of balance, and convulsions in addition to fever and muscle aches.
Though listeriosis causes short-term illness in healthy people it could be fatal in pregnant woman. Miscarriage, premature delivery, stillbirth, or life-threatening infection in the new-born could be caused as a result of Listeria infection in the women during pregnancy. Bacteremia and meningitis in the new-born, septicaemia and meningitis in immune-compromised people and older adults and acute febrile gastroenteritis in immune-competent people were reported to have caused by Listeria infection in rare cases, according to CDC.
