Thousands of Fresh Turkeys Are Recalled

Thousands of fresh turkeys were recalled from stores in eight Eastern states and the nation’s capital because of spoilage, spokesmen for two companies said today. No cases of illness were reported.

Norbest Inc. of Salt Lake City recalled 400,000 pounds of fresh turkeys distributed in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont and Pennsylvania.

In a separate recall, more than 5,000 Shady Brook Farms fresh turkeys were pulled from Giant supermarkets in the Baltimore-Washington area because of spoilage.

Mike Korologos, Norbest spokesman, said the recall was issued after the Department of Agriculture received complaints from grocers about spoilage in Norbest’s “Family Tradition” brand turkeys.

“We hope they’re all off the shelves,” he said. “We only had six complaints today out of 400,000 pounds.”

Robert Walsh, vice president of sales and marketing for Rocco Inc. of Harrisonburg, Va., said the Shady Brook Farms turkeys were recalled from markets in Baltimore and Washington because a truck shipment carrying 1,800 turkeys was improperly refrigerated, causing some of those turkeys to spoil.

It could not be determined exactly which birds were from the bad shipment, so all 5,000 to 6,000 turkeys sent to area Giant markets were recalled.