San Diego Stores Also Stop Sale of Suspect Cheeses

Major grocery stores and Mexican food markets all over San Diego County halted sales of Jalisco brand cheese on Thursday as soon as they heard news of numerous deaths and illnesses reported in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

The queso fresco and cotija style cheeses are made by Jalisco Mexican Products Inc. of Artesia.

Popular Mexican restaurants in Old Town and other areas also stopped using the Jalisco cheeses.

Although no San Diego County deaths or injuries have been reported in connection with the products, health officials warned residents not to consume the cheeses until officials can learn more about the origin of the contaminations.

“Sometimes, symptoms take three weeks or more to show up,” said Dr. Donald Ramras, San Diego County’s chief health officer. “We’re also advising people that if they have been eating this any time relatively recently--maybe a month or more--to see their physician and mention that they’ve eaten this cheese.”

Ramras said Los Angeles health officials contacted his office about two weeks ago and asked if there had been a local increase in cases of the bacteria-caused listeriosis. Ramras said health workers then surveyed six major San Diego County hospitals and none reported any cases.

As soon as news of the 28 recent deaths of Southern Californians began to spread Thursday afternoon, managers of major grocery stores throughout San Diego County, including Safeway, Vons, Ralphs, Big Bear and Food Basket, pulled from their shelves all of the suspect Jalisco brand cheeses.

Jalisco also makes other cheeses and party dips. In many cases they, too, were removed.

“The message from our main office today was to remove all of the stuff from our shelves as fast as possible and that’s what we did,” said Tom McMahon, assistant manager of Food Basket in La Mesa.

Employees at smaller stores were equally zealous.

“When I heard about it from the TV, I said, ‘Oh man, I gotta take this off the shelf quick,’ ” said Mark Kalkarma, manager of Families Market on 41st Street in East San Diego. “I haven’t sold any of it today, thank God. It’s pretty popular with the Mexicans.”

But some store managers said they had sold some of the Jalisco brand cheese Thursday before they removed the packages from their shelves.

Javier Banuelos, manager of Cali-mex Food Co. in San Ysidro, said his store sold five seven-ounce packages and two 14-ounce packages of Jalisco queso fresco cheese on Thursday.

An employee at Casa de Bandini said the Old Town restaurant stopped serving Jalisco Chile Cheese with its meals, even though that particular cheese is not believed to be involved.

Three of Tijuana’s largest food stores and two popular restaurants said they do not sell the U.S.-made cheese and were unaware of other outlets that do.

Marcos Rubio of Victor’s restaurant said that the fresco and cotija style cheeses are made nationally, commonly used and readily available in Tijuana.

Antonio Macias of Bol Corona restaurant said he was not allowed to import milk products.

Times staff writers David Freed and Marjorie Miller contributed to this story.