Over the weekend, Mondelez Global, the parent company that makes Ritz crackers, announced it had issued a voluntary recall of certain Ritz cracker sandwiches and Ritz Bits products. Whey powder used in the items had been recalled by a supplier due to a possible salmonella contamination.
The recall affects Ritz Bits Cheese, Ritz Cheese Cracker Sandwiches, Ritz Bacon Cracker Sandwiches with Cheese, Ritz Whole Wheat Cracker Sandwiches with White Cheddar Cheese, Ritz Everything Cracker Sandwiches with Cream Cheese, and Mixed Cookie variety. The products have expiration dates of January 14, 2019 to April 13, 2019. Click here for a full list of affected products. You can see a full list of the recalled items here.
So far, there have been no reported illnesses associated with consuming the Ritz products.
Symptoms of salmonella food poisoning include diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps. Typically, healthy adults can recover in less than a week, but the infection can be fatal for young children, older people, and others with weakened immune systems.
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Salmonella is responsible for some of the most widespread food-poisoning outbreaks in the United States in recent history. In 1985, more than 6,000 people were sickened and nine people died in a...
... salmonella outbreak tied to tainted milk. And an outbreak in 2009 linked to a peanut factory sickened more than 500 people, eight of whom died.
Food-poisoning outbreaks have been making headlines more frequently than usual in 2018. Earlier this month, McDonald's announced plans to remove salads from 3,000 locations after health officials pointed to the menu items as the possible source of a parasitic illness outbreak that has sickened 163 people across 10 states. Also this month, the CDC posted an alert warning customers not to eat any Kellogg's Honey Smacks and asking all retailers to stop selling the recalled cereal.
