Vendor Selling Jalisco Cheese Sought : Baby of Woman Who Bought Product After Recall Is Stillborn

Health investigators began combing Los Angeles’ Latino neighborhoods on Monday for a street vendor who reportedly sold a piece of contaminated Mexican-style cheese to a woman on June 25--almost two weeks after the product had been recalled.

The 34-year-old woman’s infant was stillborn July 5 apparently as a result of her eating the bacteria-infested cheese, said Dr. Shirley Fannin, associate director of communicable disease control for Los Angeles County.

The woman, interviewed by a county health investigator Monday morning, would only say that she bought the cheese--produced by Jalisco Mexican Products Inc. of Artesia--”from a truck vendor” who came to her neighborhood near Watts.

“It’s clearly a violation of the recall order,” Fannin said in a telephone interview.

The frustrating problem, said Fannin, is that the vendor “may have a regular cycle” and could be peddling the potentially fatal cheese “in different neighborhoods” around the city. The latest reported death, and another stillborn case involving a Latino woman, brought to 39 the number of fatalities in Los Angeles County attributed to the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes .

Jalisco was closed down by the state on June 13 when the life-threatening bacteria was discovered in its cheese products. The federal Food and Drug Administration then began a national recall of the soft, unripened cheese.

According to Fannin, the woman who purchased the Jalisco cheese from the street vendor also purchased from the vendor some cheese manufactured by Cacique Cheese Co. of City of Industry. The woman ate both pieces, Fannin said.

The Cacique firm voluntarily closed its plant Wednesday when some of its cheese was found to be contaminated with a strain of Listeria bacteria different from the kind found in Jalisco cheese.

Odds on Jalisco

Fannin said that with the exception of the 34-year-old woman interviewed Monday none of the Listeriosis victims interviewed by her staff had eaten Cacique cheese.

Therefore, she said, “the odds are that it was Jalisco” that caused the stillbirth.

Although the state Department of Food and Agriculture has now declared Cacique products “consumable,” the plant remained closed Monday while the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta continued testing a Cacique culture for possible links with the Listeriosis outbreak.

Fannin said the woman who lost her baby indicated that she purchased the cheese from a vendor who was also selling fruits and vegetables from a flatbed truck. She added that street peddlers are not licensed by the city to sell cheese.

The situation “just demonstrates to us that no matter how good your (recall) procedures are, that somebody can slip through,” Fannin said. “I find it hard to believe that anyone could be selling (the cheese) and not know that it’s not legal to sell it.”

In another development Monday, Arizona Dairy Commissioner Roy Collier said his office had reports that some stores in his state may still be selling Jalisco cheese. “I just can’t believe that anyone could still be selling it,” he said. “It just blows my mind.”

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, investigating possible criminality in the Jalisco case, indicated it could be several weeks before a decision is made on whether to file criminal complaints against Jalisco or its owner, Gary S. McPherson.

“The probable time frame is at least two months” largely due to time-consuming scientific tests that must be conducted on cheese cultures, said an investigator for the prosecutor.