990321 Airline Food Recalled For Listeria Contamination

Washington - A Tyson Foods Inc. unit that supplies meals to U.S. airlines has recalled a second batch of food in less than a month because of deadly listeria contamination.

The latest recall came amid the USDA's efforts to halt a rash of listeria contamination cases that have occurred since the beginning of the year. Some 20 deaths were recently blamed on listeria-tainted hot dogs and lunch meat made by a Sara Lee Corp. plant in Michigan.

Listeria is a bacteria commonly found in soil and water. It is harmless to most people but can cause nausea, serious illness or death among pregnant women, unborn babies, small children and others with weak immune systems.

Tyson's Culinary Foods Inc. recalled nearly 2,000 pounds of penne pasta with sausage sold to United Airlines this week after listeria was found in one sample.

Culinary Foods is a Chicago-based company that prepares meals for major airlines. Last month, the same company recalled 78,000 burritos supplied to American Airlines.

No illnesses have been reported from either case.

Culinary Foods is convinced the contamination originated outside its plant, which assembles meals from prepared foods, Tyson spokesman Archie Schaffer said.

Since the recall of the burritos, the company, its airline customers and the federal government have tested dozens of food and plant samples to check for possible contamination.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tested 60 samples of the plant's air, water and food preparation surfaces, all of which were free of listeria, Schaffer said. But tests of a pasta and sausage product turned up one positive sample.

“It is clear to us that the listeria must have originated with one of the ingredients brought in from the outside, possibly the sausage or chive garnish or something else,” Schaffer said.

As a safety precaution, the company is now pretesting all ingredients brought into the plant before they are used, then testing the final products before releasing them to airline customers, he said.

A USDA spokeswoman said regulators were investigating to pinpoint the cause of the contamination.

“We are taking an increased number of samples from this plant and working closely with the FDA,” the spokeswoman said.

Sara Lee's plant in Zeeland, Mich., which was blamed for producing tainted hot dogs and lunch meat that claimed 20 lives, won approval from the USDA to resume limited production earlier this week.

Investigators with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said the listeria outbreak was linked to dust from repairs of the Bil Mar Foods plant's air conditioning system.

Since January, the bacteria has also prompted recalls of smoked sausages made by a Georgia company, a meat product sold as “head cheese” by a Chicago firm, milk made for Land O'Lakes, and several other food products.

Thorn Apple Valley said late Friday its bankruptcy filing was linked primarily to its January recall of 30 million pounds of hot dogs, the largest such recall on record. Last month it had estimated the cost of the recall at between $1 million and $7 million.

The USDA last month promised it would soon issue a set of “good manufacturing” guidelines for makers of ready-to-eat meat to calm consumer concerns about the products. The guidelines, which are expected to resemble similar ones already issued for ground beef production, should be out later this month, the USDA spokeswoman said.

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