Bacteria Kills 28; Cheese Recalled : State Orders Brand From Stores After L.A., Orange County Deaths

A bacterial infection apparently linked to contaminated Mexican-style cheese made in Artesia has caused 28 deaths in Los Angeles and Orange counties since February and led Thursday to a statewide recall of the product from store shelves.

Many of the victims were mothers and newborn infants from Latino neighborhoods where the cheese, packaged under the brand name Jalisco, is most widely sold, said Dr. Shirley Fannin, associate director of communicable disease control for Los Angeles County.

The owners of Jalisco Mexican Products Inc. closed their plant and state inspectors quarantined cheese stored at the Artesia facility. Health officials urged the public to discard any Jalisco brand cheese, particularly queso fresco and cotija.

Markets, from the major chains to corner groceries, began stripping their shelves of Jalisco cheeses as soon as they heard of the deadly outbreak.

Jalisco produces about 9,000 pounds of cheese a day, state officials said. Eighty percent is distributed in Los Angeles and Orange counties, with the rest sold throughout the western states, as far east as Texas.

87 Stricken

Health officials said 87 people have been stricken by the disease so far, but added that many cases may have gone unreported. They said 21 people had died in Los Angeles County and seven in Orange County.

The startling death toll was made public about a month after county and federal disease specialists first received information from County-USC Medical Center of an unusually high incidence of patients developing symptoms associated with a bacterial infection known medically as Listeria monocytogenes.

The Listeria symptoms range from a mild, flu-like illness to, in more severe cases, fever, abdominal pain, headache and vomiting.

“They (the cases) were scattered all over,” said Dr. Betty Agee, a high-ranking Los Angeles County communicable disease official.

About 30 hospitals reported the illness, with victims ranging from Bel-Air on Los Angeles’ Westside to Pomona in the east San Gabriel Valley, from Van Nuys in the San Fernando Valley to Carson in southern Los Angeles County.

Babies Victims

Fannin said 15 of the dead were newborn and stillborn babies. Others included pregnant women or people with illnesses that made them more susceptible to the disease.

Finding the source of the contamination required medical detective work, health officials said.

The first tip off came in early May, Fannin said, when County-USC Medical Center notified the Health Department of 16 cases of the Listeria infection, an unusually high number of cases.

“As soon as we got wind that there was a problem, we sat down and wrote letters to every hospital in the city with over 200 beds,” Agee explained. “We asked them to search their records.”

County health officials then called in the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, which sent three specialists to assist in the probe.

The investigators examined about 60 food items to see if there was a common link between the victims and the types of food they had consumed, according to William Ihle, chief spokesman for the state Health Department.

Samples From Homes

Eventually, cheese samples were taken from the homes of those stricken with the illness and compared with Jalisco products and two other brands of cheese that investigators had purchased from stores. The samples were sent to Atlanta, where bacterial cultures were studied.

The results were then narrowed to cheese manufactured at Jalisco in Artesia. “This was one food item used by all the people in the study,” Ihle said.

The cause is “now fairly clearly focused on the (Jalisco) cheese,” Fannin said.

The associate director of the state Food and Agriculture Department, Rex Magee, said that by Saturday or Sunday investigators expect to declare the cheese contaminated.

But by Thursday, mounting evidence convinced state health officials to order the cheese off store shelves. They were prepared to order the plant closed, but the owners voluntarily ceased operations about 4 p.m. Thursday, sending the 65 employees home.

“It will stay closed until we have an opportunity to go in and investigate and find the cause of the problem and correct it,” said Hans Van Ness, deputy director of the state Food and Agriculture Department.

Ceased Distribution

Cheese company representatives at first refused to talk to reporters. But late in the afternoon, Steve Gigliotti, an attorney for the firm, met with reporters outside the Artesia plant.

He said the company has voluntarily ceased distribution of all of its 15 dairy product--including the two suspect cheeses. He said that company distributors were instructed to pull all company products from store shelves.

Gigliotti said Jalisco had known for some time that “there was problem with somebody’s cheese in Southern California,” but did not learn until Thursday that its products were being linked to the illnesses and deaths.

“We don’t know if it’s anything in our cheese,” said Gigliotti. “Right now we are running tests and the government is running tests and we’ll find out what it is.”

“It’s a shock,” he said. “We’ve been in business for 17 years and we have never had anything happen like this before.”

State investigators said they will now turn their attention to determining the cause of the contamination.