An E. coli outbreak has left 17 people sick in eight different states after contaminated flour was sold at Aldi’s supermarkets.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claim 5 lbs. bags of Baker’s Corner All Purpose Flour have been contaminated with E. coli, and urged anyone who might have purchased it to throw it away immediately.
“Consumers should not use any of the recalled flour and should throw recalled flour away,” the CDC said of the outbreak.
“If you stored flour purchased from ALDI in another container without the packaging and don’t remember the brand or ‘better by’ date, throw it away. Consumers should thoroughly wash the containers before using them again,” the CDC added.
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The bags of flour were sold at Aldi’s located in Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and West Virginia.
The CDC reports that the illnesses started back in December 2018 to April 2019. Three people have been hospitalized, but no deaths have been reported.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is working to determine whether other brands of flour have been contaminated as well.
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As for symptoms of E. coli, people usually get sick an average three to four days after swallowing the germ. Sixty-five percent of reported E. coli cases are females, and the age range for this particular contamination ranged from 7-to 86-year-olds, with an average age of 23 for infected peoples.
E. coli can be spread by eating raw dough, and of seven infected people interviewed, 57 percent of them reported eating raw dough or batter.