Smoked salmon tainted with salmonella has sickened hundreds of people in the Netherlands, authorities said, sparking major recalls there and in the US.
US health authorities say they are also investigating whether the salmon could be at the root of a multi-state outbreak of the illness.
The Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and the Environment said the salmon was traced to a Dutch company called Foppen, which sells fish to many major supermarkets in the Netherlands and stores around the world.
In the US, Foppen said it supplied the fish to only Costco Wholesale. It did not believe the contaminated fish was sold to any other countries.
The Dutch public health institute said that about 200 people – and likely more – have been sickened in the Netherlands by a strain of the bacteria called Salmonella Thompson.
A representative for the US Centres for Disease and Control Prevention, Lola Russell, says the federal agency has 85 recorded cases of the same strain from 27 states starting from July 1. Without an outbreak, she said the average number of such cases over that time would be about 30.