A well-known dairy in a highly populated region also pulled an apparent nearly 13,000 products whose dates haven't yet expired.
It’s a telling illustration of supply chain and how dairy is produced for major brand labels. We reported in late February when a Milwaukee operation of Saputo Cheese, a Canadian manufacturer that licenses product to widely marketed consumer names, recalled five varieties of Walmart Great Value cottage cheese for product that had been “not fully pasteurized,” according to an announcement from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Beyond the Walmart Great Value products, the FDA now lists a California dairy, Clover Sonoma, with products that were also recalled.
In addition to the varying Great Value unit sizes and lean points, Clover Sonoma’s 2% lowfat cottage cheese in 16-ounce and 32-ounce container were recalled, along with the brand’s sour cream in eight-ounces and 16-ounces. The best-by date and other identifying codes on the cottage cheese are reported as MAR-31-26, A3 PLT# 06-71. Those details for the sour cream are reported as APR-17-26, B2 PLT#06-71. It appears this affects a total 7,404 containers of cottage cheese and 5,304 sour cream products.
Clover Sonoma is commonly known in parts of California, featuring its Clo the Cow mascot on the label. The company’s site says their products are “distributed mainly in California with some retail clients in Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Hawaii, Utah, and Wyoming.”
Today the FDA has named this recall as a Class II risk, indicating their assessment that consuming the possibly under-pasteurized product “may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences or where the probability of serious adverse health consequences is remote.”
The Science History Institute and the American Dairy Association explain how before pasteurization was legally mandated across the country by the 1940s, “the infant mortality rate for New York City averaged 240 deaths per every 1,000 births. Many of those deaths were believed to be due to tainted milk supplies”—some from cows carrying tuberculosis.
That’s one example of why Thursday’s FDA alert citing “potentially under pasteurized” cottage cheese—and now, a report of sour cream—would potentially not be safe for consumers in the 11 states where product was reportedly distributed: Alabama, Arizona, California, Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.
In the February recall announcement, the FDA explained: “The issue was discovered during pasteurizer troubleshooting exercises … The impacted pasteurizer was returned to normal function and was verified and sealed by the California Department of Food and Agriculture.”
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