King Soopers and City Market stores in Colorado have removed frozen ground-turkey products that have been recalled because of possible contamination from salmonella.
King Soopers and City Market said they removed the affected items from store shelves after ground-turkey supplier Cargill recalled the products late Wednesday.
The stores said they have initiated their customer-recall notification system.
The ground-turkey products are sold under the Kroger Ground Turkey label with a “use or freeze by” date between Feb. 20, 2011, and Aug. 23, 2011.
Kelli McGannon, spokeswoman for King Soopers in Colorado, said the company was alerted to the recall Wednesday evening and took the products off shelves at 139 Colorado stores that night.
McGannon said customers are urged to check their refrigerators and freezers for the recalled products. Customers who have purchased the recalled products will receive register-receipt messages and/or automated phone calls.
Customers who find the recalled products in their homes should return them to their local King Soopers or City Market store for a refund.
Cargill announced a voluntary recall of about 36 million pounds of fresh and frozen ground-turkey products due to possible contamination from Salmonella Heidelberg.
The outbreak killed one person in California and sickened dozens more across the country. No illnesses were reported in Colorado.
Critics complained about the delay from the first signs of an outbreak in March to Wednesday’s recall.
But Dr. Christopher Braden, an epidemiologist at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and David Goldman of the federal Food Safety and Inspection Service said at a briefing Thursday that authorities weren’t sure about the source of the outbreak until July, when they identified it through shopper-card information from victims who had purchased the Cargill turkey and a leftover sample of turkey from a victim’s home. Previous evidence had pointed to other companies as well, they said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
