Foods4BetterHealth.com, a new food and nutrition web site that believes in using food to heal and prevent disease and illness and help you live a long, happy life, is reporting on the recent hepatitis A outbreak that affected five U.S. states, as announced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) earlier this week.

As Foods4BetterHealth notes (http://www.foods4betterhealth.com/news-bite-frozen-fruit-mix-recalled-linked-to-hepatitis-a-outbreak-2137), 34 people were infected with the hepatitis A virus allegedly due to contamination in a Townsend Farms frozen berry mix. To date, nine people have been hospitalized. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is investigating the incident, believed to be caused by contamination from the pomegranate seeds, imported from Egypt, found in the berry mix. Townsend Farms is voluntarily recalling the product and is informing its retailers about the contamination.

As the article “News Bite: Frozen Fruit Mix Recalled, Linked to Hepatitis A Outbreak,” reports, hepatitis A is a rare but contagious liver infection that is usually only present in North Africa and the Middle East. This isn’t the first time that a hepatitis A outbreak occurred due to food contamination; the article also notes that the same genotype of the virus was found in Europe earlier this year and in 2012 in British Columbia, Canada, which was also a result of contaminated pomegranate seeds.

The Foods4BetterHealth article notes that consumers should immediately discard this product if they’ve purchased it, and get checked by a physician if they’ve already consumed the product. Hepatitis A symptoms usually appear five to 15 days after exposure to the virus. If treated within two weeks with a hepatitis A vaccination, there are usually no long-term effects; however, if left untreated, the condition can progress to liver failure and death.

The Foods4BetterHealth report concludes that consumers need to be vigilant about the products they purchase, and that food manufacturers should take more responsibility for the items they import.

(SOURCE: “Townsend Farms voluntarily recalls limited lots of frozen organic antioxidant blend products due to possible health risk,” U.S. Food and Drug Administration web site; http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm355166.htm, last accessed June 4, 2013.)

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– Courtesy of PRWeb