Ariza Cheese Co

A Paramount-based cheese manufacturing company has voluntarily recalled about 10,000 packages of one of its products after a unit in New York tested positive for a potentially fatal bacterium. Ariza Cheese Co. began recalling Queso Fresco Cheese from about 250 stores in California and New York after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration notified the company that one package was found to be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, said Blake Johnson, Ariza's general manager.

A Paramount-based cheese manufacturing company has voluntarily recalled about 10,000 packages of one of its products after a unit in New York tested positive for a potentially fatal bacterium. Ariza Cheese Co. began recalling Queso Fresco Cheese from about 250 stores in California and New York after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration notified the company that one package was found to be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, said Blake Johnson, Ariza's general manager.

The Ariza Cheese Co., a Paramount firm that specializes in making Mexican-style cheese, has agreed to recall all its products after potentially deadly listeria bacteria was found in a sample, state officials said Friday. No illnesses have been reported, but officials warned consumers they should discard any Ariza cheese products they have. A sample of "Panela" soft fresh cheese, taken Jan.

Prosecutors on Thursday charged 10 people and four companies in Los Angeles with violating federal food safety laws in cases ranging from the alleged sale of rat-contaminated meat to the smuggling of Japanese-raised Kobe beef into the United States. One case, dating to 2001, involves the Leonard Meat Co. of Vernon, where the U.S. Department of Agriculture seized 13,000 pounds of meat that inspectors said was contaminated with feces and showed signs of having been gnawed by rodents.

Competitors of Jalisco Mexican Products Inc., whose contaminated cheese has been linked to 29 deaths in Los Angeles and Orange counties, are worried that panicky consumers will stop buying their Mexican-style cheeses too. Raul Andrade, plant manager and part-owner of Cotija Cheese Co. in East Los Angeles, said consumers and retailers were confusing his cheese with Jalisco's cotija variety, one of the cheeses recalled by health officials.

Doctors with the San Diego County health department have recorded one miscarriage, which occurred Tuesday, and a death linked to contaminated Jalisco brand cheese. The tainted cheese has been connected to as many as 46 deaths statewide. A pregnant Ramona woman was seen by physicians at UC San Diego Medical Center because she had been feeling ill for a few days, said Dr. Michele S.

Expanding their investigation, state auditors have been ordered into six California cheese-processing plants to examine milk purchasing and pasteurization records after a deadly bacterial outbreak linked to Jalisco-brand Mexican-style cheeses, it was disclosed Friday.

A nationwide investigation of all soft cheese products has been launched by the federal Food and Drug Administration as a result of a potentially deadly bacterial infection found in the Mexican-style soft cheese manufactured by a Los Angeles-area firm, the agency disclosed Wednesday. An FDA order, issued on July 2, calls for samples to be taken "of various types of soft cheeses, not just Mexican-style cheeses," Emil Corwin, an agency spokesman, told The Times.

State officials have asked Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner to conduct a criminal investigation of Jalisco Mexican Products Inc., the company that produced the Mexican-style cheeses linked to a bacterial infection that has caused 39 deaths in California, it was learned Tuesday.

Not long ago, if you asked non-Latinos what they thought of cheeses such as Queso Fresco, Panela and Cotija, likely responses would have ranged from blank stares to words like "icky" or "deadly." Even those who had never tasted the stuff remember the largest food poisoning outbreak in California history. By the time the panic over Jalisco Mexican Products Inc. subsided 13 years ago, 40 people were dead--most of them babies, and the fledgling Hispanic cheese industry was barely surviving.