Frozen Waffle Products Are Recalled Over Listeria Risk

Nearly 700 frozen waffle products, some of them sold under the brands of major retailers like Kroger, Target and Walmart, were recalled on Friday over concerns of potential contamination with the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes, according to their manufacturer.The manufacturer, TreeHouse Foods, issued a voluntary recall and said in a statement that the “issue was discovered through routine testing at the manufacturing facility.”There have been no confirmed reports of illness related to the recalled products, TreeHouse said.TreeHouse, which operates more than two dozen production facilities in the United States and Canada, said that the recall affected products distributed in both countries and in various formats.Frozen waffle brands affected by the recall included several of Kroger’s Simple Truth protein waffles, Target’s Good & Gather Homestyle and Buttermilk flavors, and Walmart’s Great Value Homestyle and Blueberry waffles.Infections from listeria, which are bacteria that can contaminate foods, are rare but can cause potentially serious illnesses.Typical symptoms include fever and headaches.Young children, older adults and pregnant women are at the greatest risk for more serious and potentially life-threatening side effects.Each year in the United States, an estimated 1,600 people are infected with listeria, and about 260 people die from those infections, according to the U.S.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.“We see it most severely in people with immune systems that are compromised in some way, and that can be the very young, the very old,” Dr.Stuart C.

Ray, a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, said on Saturday.Symptoms “can be as simple as a gastroenteritis, but it can be as severe as a meningitis,” he added.If someone is infected with listeria bacteria, the incubation period can last several days and sometimes several weeks.An infection might not be immediately...