Stores Act Quickly, Remove Cheese Based on News, Reports by Patrons

Most major markets quickly stripped their shelves of Jalisco brand cheese late Thursday afternoon after warnings that it apparently had caused as many as 28 deaths in Southern California, but many store managers said notification came unofficially from customers or news reports.

“We got a call from a newspaper after 4 o’clock,” said Gene Brown, senior vice president for public relations for Ralphs Grocery Co. “We could not determine anything from the (Jalisco) company itself, so we contacted the (Los Angeles County) health department and learned there was some kind of problem. We pulled the product immediately.”

Word that Jalisco cheese was believed linked to more than 70 cases of Listeria monocytogenes bacterial infection cases in Los Angeles County during the last few weeks spread quickly through the Latino community, where the Jalisco brand is popular.

Gets Phone Call

At El Mercado, a large center containing a market and shops at 1st and Lorena streets in East Los Angeles, grocery store manager Beto Naranjo said: “My boss telephoned about 5 o’clock and said he’d heard on the news that this cheese might be poisonous. We’d had no official notification, but we didn’t feel we could take any chances.”

Naranjo hurriedly pulled more than $200 worth of Jalisco brand cheese from the shelves and stored it away to await developments.

Some of the small eating establishments in El Mercado still had Jalisco cheese on display. But at one of them, El Gaucho, the case bore a hand-printed sign reading, “Jalisco cheese will not be sold until further notice.”

“I don’t want anyone dying or getting sick from cheese they bought from us,” said Eva Diaz, working behind the El Gaucho counter. “Everyone is saying the cheese is dangerous, so I’m not selling it any more.”

There was much conversation in Spanish about Jalisco, but no one seemed to know anyone who had become ill after eating it.

Customer Startled

At Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles, Dolores Martinez of East Los Angeles bought a package of Jalisco cheese. She looked startled when a bystander told her it might be contaminated. “Well, I don’t know,” she said. “I was going to make tacos tonight.”

After looking undecided for several moments, she marched away with the cheese, refusing to talk about it further.

Many Mexican restaurant managers said they do not use Jalisco in preparing their food because it does not appeal to non-Latino patrons. At La Golondrina Mexican Cafe, an Olvera Street spot popular with tourists, manager Rhonda Blake said: “We don’t use it. We use Monterey jack.”

She said the Mexican-style cheese produced under the Jalisco brand “has a very peculiar smell, very strong, and a lot of Americans don’t like it. Nobody will eat it unless they’re familiar with it, so you’d only find it in very small restaurants like the taquitas.”

Angie Montes, manager of El Arco Iris in Highland Park, agreed with Blake, suggesting that Jalisco cheeses would be used “mostly at home” by Latinos. She said her restaurant uses jack and Cheddar cheeses because “we melt them . . . and put them on the beans and enchiladas. Jalisco doesn’t melt well.” Told about the health warning, she said: “My parents have it (Jalisco) at home. I just looked in the refrigerator and they had a lot of it. I’m going to call them right now.”

Not Used in Restaurants

Officials of the 157-restaurant El Torito chain and Acapulco Restaurants (32) said they do not use Jalisco.

Asked whether there is any routine method of notifying stores and restaurants in such cases, a spokesman for Dr. Shirley Fannin, deputy director of the Los Angeles County Health Services Department, said recall of any food or drug product and individual notification of retailers of such a recall “is the responsibility of state and federal agencies.”

He stressed, “Our role is to publicize any dangerous situation that comes to our attention--in this case to warn against consumption of such products if they are on the shelf--and that we have done today.”

It was soon after the department’s press conference that phones began to ring in the offices of major market chains.

Jack Brown, an executive of the Stater Bros. chain, said one of his managers telephoned him to say he had heard the story on a newscast. All 94 stores were notified electronically to take Jalisco cheese from the shelves.

Distributor Telephones

A Hughes Market executive said that 42-store chain’s first indication of trouble came in a late afternoon telephone call from the distributor, who asked that Jalisco cheese be removed.

Lucky Stores Vice President Dick Fredericksen said that chain’s electronic communication system flashed the word at once to 262 markets in California, Arizona and the Las Vegas area that Jalisco should be removed until further notice.

And at Jonsons Market at Brooklyn Avenue and Soto Street in East Los Angeles, manager Joe Maldonado said he had removed Jalisco after being telephoned by his boss.

“I eat a lot of it myself,” Maldonado said. “I have it usually on Sundays on my menudo. I’m going to miss it this weekend.”

Times staff writers Leonard Greenwood, George Ramos, John Kendall, Penelope McMillan, Jerry Belcher, Ted Thackrey Jr., Herbert A. Sample, David Freed, Marjorie Miller and Glenn F. Bunting contributed to this story.