Don’t Panic over Frozen Veg Scare

Calls not to panic have been issued after nine people are reported to have been killed across Europe by contaminated frozen vegetables.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has issued an alert over the products, stating that the outbreak, which has been traced to a factory in Hungary, has affected products sold in countries such as Austria, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom, and has been attributed to a total of 47 cases of infection since 2015, nine of which have ended with the death of the person affected by this disease.

However, as the report also says, these products, which are sold through the Aldi and Lidl supermarkets, have not yet been identified as having been sold in Spain.

The products that have been marketed in some supermarkets throughout Europe have been exposed to a contagion by a bacterium called ‘Listeria monocytogenes’ responsible for listerioris. This disease causes fever, nausea, muscle aches and diarrhoea, but in the most serious cases can end up being deadly.

According to the EFSA, the source of the contagion has been located in a production plant located in Hungary, which was already subjected to disinfection and cleaning operations after suffering different health alerts in the past.

The EFSA analysis suggests that it is the same strain of Listeria monocytogenes that has been reproduced in the samples taken in 2016, 2017 and 2018, which indicates that the bacterium has managed to survive the efforts to eradicate it permanently. Not being able to determine specifically the chain of production that has been affected, the factory has stopped its activity.