Sargento Issues Recall For Multiple Cheese Products
Brian O Sutter
Recalls
It doesn't happen often but it is one of the more widespread recalls that can be issued, food. Because big food product recalls have the potential to affect more people than an automotive recall, there are strict health codes that are in place to prevent the necessity for a recall. A recall issued for a food product usually stems from some kind of illness or danger from ingesting the product. Therefore this could result in bodily harm and medical care for the consumer. Sargento recently released a recall for some of its cheese products that you may want to hear about, as well as what can be done during a recall of a food product.Sargento Recall
The cheese producing giant has recalled many of it's sliced and shredded cheeses due to a possible contamination of the listeria bacteria. Listeria is a bacteria that leads to the disease listeriosis. This disease is particularly harmful to babies, pregnant women and those with a compromised or weakened immune system. The disease can manifest itself as sepsis or meningitis and can lead to the miscarriage of an otherwise healthy pregnancy.
Sargento has not reported any illnesses that have come from the products included in the recall but they have deciphered that the cause of the bacteria was a supplier facility. Therefore, the only products that have been recalled are the ones that specific have come from that facility. They have discontinued production from that supplier.
The number of products and sell by dates that fall under the recall has expanded since the original release of the recall. There is a potential for that to happen again but they seem to have the source under control.
Food Resulting In Illnesses
This specific recall may not affect you but it may also bring up questions about legal issues regarding food poisoning or food illnesses. Like most legal inquiries we assess each scenario on a case-by-case basis. The circumstances of the illness and how you acquired it are important to the validity of a case against anyone who is selling a food product or preparing one for you.
We'll take a food poisoning scenario, where you are inquiring about a case where you got food poisoning after eating a specific thing. The legs of that argument will need to stand on a few things, how long of a time delay between consuming the food and getting sick is a good start. The longer the delay the harder it is to decipher what exactly caused the illness.
Liability in the case of foods is also a tricky situation. The easier time we have proving that it was the specific product or neglect in preparation that caused the illness, the better case you have. Liability is most commonly placed on the manufacturer when there is contaminants present. Negligence is prominent in cases where if the food was prepared improperly and led to the illness then it would be the establishment that made the meal that would hold liability. Finally, there is the idea of an implied warranty, that a product being sold or served is implied to not be contaminated. In the same vein the advertising of the product is taken as truth as well. If the label says washed, it is taken as truth that the product has been washed.
The two simple things we need to be able to prove is that the food was contaminated and that food made you sick. It sounds a little bit simpler than it is but that is still how we make it work. In a recall situation it is also important that the illness happened before the food was recalled or that there was know way of knowing about the recall.