Check Your Freezers: 78,000 Pounds of Ground Turkey Recalled

By Daisy Luther

If you have any ground turkey in your freezer, you need to check to see if it’s among the more than 78,000 pounds of meat that has just been recalled.

Produced by Butterball, LLC, in Mount Olive, N.C, the turkey was sold in July under several brand names including Butterball, Kroger, and Food Lion.

78,164 pounds were recalled due to fears that the products may be contaminated with Salmonella Schwarzengrund, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).

The contamination was discovered when several people became ill.

FSIS and public health partners, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, have been investigating a multistate outbreak of Salmonella Schwarzengrund illnesses involving 5 case patients from 2 states.  Wisconsin collected three intact Butterball brand ground turkey samples from a residence where 4 of the case patients live.  The case patients and ground turkey Salmonella Schwarzengrund isolates are closely related, genetically. (source)

Here are the products that have been recalled.

The following products are subject to recall:

• 48-oz. plastic wrapped tray containing “BUTTERBALL everyday Fresh Ground Turkey WITH NATURAL FLAVORING (85% LEAN/15% FAT)” with sell or freeze by date of 7/26/18, lot code 8188, and UPC codes 22655-71555 or 22655-71557 represented on the label.
• 48-oz. plastic wrapped tray containing “BUTTERBALL everyday Fresh Ground Turkey WITH NATURAL FLAVORING (93% LEAN/7% FAT)” with sell or freeze by date of 7/26/18, lot code 8188 and UPC code 22655-71556 represented on the label.
• 16-oz. plastic wrapped tray containing “BUTTERBALL everyday Fresh Ground Turkey WITH NATURAL FLAVORING (85% LEAN/15% FAT)” with sell or freeze by date of 7/26/18, lot code 8188 and UPC code 22655-71546 represented on the label.
• 16-oz. plastic wrapped tray containing “BUTTERBALL everyday Fresh Ground Turkey WITH NATURAL FLAVORING (93% LEAN/7% FAT)” with sell or freeze by date of 7/26/18, lot code 8188 and UPC codes 22655-71547 or 22655-71561 represented on the label
• 48-oz. plastic wrapped tray containing “Kroger GROUND TURKEY FRESH 85% LEAN – 15% FAT” with sell or freeze by date of 7/26/18, lot code 8188, and UPC code 111141097993 represented on the label.
• 48-oz. plastic wrapped tray containing “FOOD LION 15% fat ground turkey with natural flavorings” with sell or freeze by date of 7/26/18, lot code 8188 and UPC code 3582609294 represented on the label.

The products subject to recall bear establishment number “EST. P-7345” inside the USDA mark of inspection. These items were shipped to institutional and retail locations nationwide. (source)

Obviously, if you have any of these products they’ll be in your freezer since they were in stores last summer. But imagine how many of those seemingly random mysterious stomach bugs may have been the result of eating contaminated turkey.

What is Salmonella Schwarzengrund?

This is a common strain of salmonella in Southeast Asia.

Salmonella schwarzengrund (strain CVM19633) is the predominant cause of salmonellosis in Southeast Asia, a major source of imported food products to the United States. It was also the cause of the first recognized outbreak of fluoroquinolone-resistant salmonellosis in the U.S.. Recent reports suggest that high-level fluoroquinolone resistance is emerging in S. schwarzengrund in different parts of the world. This serovar is remarkably disposed to nosocomial spread, and presents a unique opportunity to identify factors that facilitate this important type of transmission. MDR strain CVM19633 and susceptible strain SL480 belong to the S. schwarzengrund serovar. (source)

People who have eaten food contaminated with Salmonella schwarzengrund will generally develop diarrhea, fever, and stomach cramps within 12-72 hours. They will be sick for approximately 4 to 7 days and, for the most part, will recover without medical treatment.

Some more severe cases may require hospitalization and IV fluids due to dehydration. Older adults, infants, and those with weakened immune systems are more likely to become seriously ill.

What should you do if you have some of the potentially contaminated ground turkey?

If you discover some of the turkey listed above in your freezer, you should either throw it away or return it to the store where you purchased it.

For more information about this or other recalls:

Consumers with food safety questions can “Ask Karen,” the FSIS virtual representative available 24 hours a day at AskKaren.gov or via smartphone at m.askkaren.gov. The toll-free USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline 1-888-MPHotline (1-888-674-6854) is available in English and Spanish and can be reached from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (Eastern Time) Monday through Friday. Recorded food safety messages are available 24 hours a day. The online Electronic Consumer Complaint Monitoring System can be accessed 24 hours a day at: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/reportproblem. (source)

Daisy Luther is a coffee-swigging, gun-toting blogger who writes about current events, preparedness, frugality, voluntaryism, and the pursuit of liberty on her website, The Organic Prepper, where this article first appeared. She is widely republished across alternative media and she curates all the most important news links on her aggregate site, PreppersDailyNews.com. Daisy is the best-selling author of 4 books and lives in the mountains of Virginia with her two daughters and an ever-growing menagerie. You can find her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.