State Closes Cheese Firm After Fluke Inspection

State food inspectors, looking for violations in the manufacture of Mexican-style cheese, mistakenly showed up at an Italian-style cheese plant in Downey earlier this month. But they shut down the facility and ordered a product recall when they discovered that the firm was bypassing the milk pasteurization process that is required under state law.

Collica Dairy, which makes ricotta cheese for mom-and-pop pizzerias, was ordered to stop production on July 3, the day inspectors from the state Food and Agriculture Department made their call.

State and county officials said none of the disease-causing bacteria Listeria monocytogenes has been found at the Collica plant or in its products. But production remains shut down until the state rules on whether to approve a method that the company says is safely removing bacteria from its milk.

State inspectors have been carefully scrutinizing Mexican-style cheese production since mid-June, when Listeria was detected in the Artesia plant of Jalisco Mexican Products Inc. More than 60 deaths have been reported nationwide from the bacteria. Officials believe the outbreak was caused by faulty pasteurization.

Owners’ Explanation

At a meeting on Wednesday, Collica’s owners, Paul Collica and his son, Vince, reportedly told state officials that the process they use to heat milk in vats was equivalent to pasteurization and that there was no problem with their products.

They could not be reached Thursday for comment.

A Collica spokesman who described himself as a family friend said that the plant has a pasteurization unit that heats milk at the required 161 degrees for 15 seconds. But for ricotta production, he explained, the plant uses three 500-gallon vats that heat milk to 180 degrees for a longer period of time. “I don’t think it’s any different” from pasteurization, he said.

Pasteurization Process

When milk is pasteurized, the product generally flows through a system of stainless steel tubes or plates, quickly heated and then quickly cooled to prevent injury to its flavor.

Told of the Collica method, Dr. Shirley Fannin, associate director for communicable disease control for Los Angeles County, cautioned that heating milk in vats may not provide the even heat needed for bacteria-killing pasteurization. “I would worry about whether the center of the vat and the sides reached even temperatures (of at least 161 degrees),” she said.

Fannin added, however, that only the Jalisco firm has been connected to any sicknesses or deaths in the county.

On a related subject, Fannin said that listeriosis has been appearing in Los Angeles County at twice the national rate since 1983. Research shows that 44 individuals fell ill from the bacteria in 1983, and 46 in 1984, she said, adding that it was not immediately clear if any listeriosis-related deaths occurred during those years. There were 118 cases reported in the county so far this year.

Fannin said the figures indicate that the county average of listeriosis sicknesses has been running at twice the national rate, which is approximately six cases per 1 million population. He said that county medical researchers are attempting to discover why.

“Nobody before has ever had this many cases together at one time,” she said of the current outbreak.

The Collica firm, located in a small green, one-story building in a Downey industrial neighborhood, remained closed Thursday.

The owners were allowed to continue to distribute mozzarella cheeses they buy from Wisconsin and Wyoming makers and sell to pizzerias in Orange and Los Angeles counties, and to a lesser extent, to the public. The small retail store in front of the plant also was allowed to remain open, as long as it sold only products not made at Collica.

Ricotta Made There

Ricotta, a soft Italian cheese, is the only cheese made on the premises. It was also distributed to small pizza restaurants and pizza take-out shops. Total annual sales run in excess of $2 million, the company spokesman said.

Jan Wessell, a spokesman for Food and Agriculture, said in a telephone interview from the agency’s Sacramento headquarters that, indeed, the agency made a “mistake” earlier this month when it included Collica on an inspection tour of Southland Mexican-style cheese producers. But once in the plant, she said, inspectors observed that the firm was not using its pasteurizing unit in its production of ricotta.

“They are required (by law) to pasteurize,” she said. “So we shut the plant down” and ordered a recall of the firm’s ricotta cheese.

No public announcement was made of the order.

“It was a routine regulatory action,” said Hans Van Nes, the department’s deputy director, not related to the Listeria outbreak. “Our concern has been with soft Mexican cheese. There are no problems with other cheese. That’s why we saw this as a (routine) regulatory action.”

Nationwide Inquiry

On Wednesday, the federal Food and Drug Administration disclosed a nationwide investigation into the production of all soft cheeses, triggered by the outbreak of listeriosis tied to Mexican-style cheese.

Thursday, an FDA spokesman more precisely defined the types of cheese being examined for proper pasteurization and sanitation procedures.

Among the cheeses that are coming under FDA scrutiny, he said, were Limburger, Port du Salut, Liederkranz, Gouda, Monterey Jack, Muenster and Edam. The inspection, involving a cross-section of cheese producers, should be completed by mid-September, he said.