Dead bat found in Fresh Express packaged salad in Florida leads to recall

Two people have started precautionary rabies treatment after a dead bat was found in a pack of Organic Marketside Spring Mix from a Walmart store.

 

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When tucking into a healthy serving of salad, the last thing anyone wants to find is a dead bat on their plate. However two people in Florida did start munching their Organic Marketside Spring Mix salad before uncovering the deceased critter. Now Fresh Express is recalling a limited number of cases of the product from Walmart stores all over the southeastern United States. As reported by the Miami Herald, the CDC is reportedly working with the Florida Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control to fully investigate the matter.

Minimal chance of rabies contamination, but …

On a cheerful note, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration did say in the salad recall notes that while there is a possibility of finding bat body parts in your salad, there is luckily only a “minimal risk of rabies contamination.” 

However, on a definitely less cheerful note, the CDC states on their website that the bat remains were sent to a rabies lab for laboratory testing, as bats in the U.S. have sometimes been known to have the disease. The CDC statement says that due to the “deteriorated condition” of the bat, this doesn’t allow them to definitively state whether or not the bat in question had rabies.

However, the CDC did cite the risk of rabies transmission from the salad to be very low, but they cannot rule it out altogether. For that reason both people who tucked into the contaminated salad are set to start treatment, just as if they had definitely been exposed to the disease.

According to a report by CNN, Fresh Express said in a statement that as soon as they were notified about the discovery, food safety rapid response teams from both Fresh Express and Walmart acted immediately to investigate all records relating to the product in question and initiated the necessary product recall and removal procedures. According to the statement, no other Marketside or Fresh Express salads are subject to a recall.

Shoppers should check whether they bought the product

For anyone who might have a pack sitting in their refrigerator, the Fresh Express product in question is served up in a five-ounce, clear plastic container. Reportedly the “Best By” date on the product is April 14, 2017 and the production code on the pack is G089B19. The UPC code on the bottom of the salad container is 6 8113132897 5.

Anyone who finds they have purchased the salad in question – with or without the extra protein value – can either throw the pack away or return it to the branch of Walmart where it was purchased for a refund. To get an idea of locations, the Fresh Express salads in question were delivered to Walmart stores in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina and, of course, Florida. So far no other discovered body parts have been reported.

Sources: CNN, Miami Herald