Walmart Recalls Bettergoods Lemon Alfredo Fettuccine Nationwide After Listeria Found in Two Lots

What happened

Gias Foods Inc. announced a nationwide recall of two lots of its Bettergoods Authentic Italian Lemon Alfredo Fettuccine on September 15, according to a notice posted on the Food and Drug Administration's website. The frozen pasta was sold in Walmart stores across the country under Walmart's private Bettergoods label.

Routine testing by the Washington State Department of Agriculture and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services turned up Listeria monocytogenes in finished product, according to the FDA notice. Two state agencies on opposite coasts independently caught the same problem. Gias Foods says it has since halted distribution and is working with the FDA to figure out where the contamination came from.

The product details

The recalled pasta comes in a 22-ounce yellow plastic package with UPC 194346442706. Consumers should check for lot number L6079C or L6080C, stamped on the back along with an expiration date of either September 19, 2027 or September 20, 2027, according to the FDA and confirmed across Fox Business, FOX 6 Milwaukee, and multiple other outlets.

No illnesses have been reported in connection with the recalled lots, Gias Foods said in its statement. Anyone holding the affected packages is told to return them to Walmart for a full refund. Gias Foods can be reached at sales@giasfoods.com for questions, with the company saying it responds within 24 hours.

Why Listeria is not a normal food scare

Listeria monocytogenes doesn't announce itself. Contaminated food looks, smells and tastes completely normal. Symptoms of invasive listeriosis, according to the FDA notice, can include high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea and abdominal pain, and in the case of pregnant women, the infection can cause miscarriage or stillbirth.

The incubation period is the real problem here. Symptoms can take weeks to show up, meaning someone could eat this pasta today and not feel sick until well into November. Health officials say anyone who ate the product and later develops symptoms should tell their doctor about the possible exposure, since standard illness workups don't automatically test for Listeria.

The people most at risk are young children, adults 65 and older, pregnant women, and anyone with a weakened immune system. Healthy adults may get off with a rough few days of fever and stomach trouble, but for the vulnerable groups this bacteria can be fatal.

State inspectors, not federal ones, found this first

This contamination wasn't caught by a federal inspection program. It was found through routine sampling conducted independently by Washington State and Florida agriculture departments, according to the FDA's own recall notice. The FDA's role here was posting the company's voluntary recall announcement, not detecting the problem itself.

State agriculture departments running their own sampling programs are a normal part of the food safety system. In this case, contamination got caught before anyone got sick, based on what's been reported so far. The question remains how much contaminated product moves through the system in the gap before a state, rather than a federal agency, happens to test the right batch. Neither the FDA notice nor the company's statement addresses how long the affected lots had been on shelves before testing flagged them.

Not the first time for this category

ZeroHedge noted that last year a separate Listeria outbreak tied to pasta meals from Nate's Fine Foods reached Walmart, Kroger and Trader Joe's shelves, and was linked to at least six deaths and 25 hospitalizations before it was contained. That outbreak and this recall are not connected by any shared source or company, but they land in the same product category and the same major retailer within roughly a year of each other.

Gias Foods' investigation with the FDA into the source of the contamination is ongoing. No timeline has been given for when that investigation will conclude, and the FDA has not indicated whether additional lots or products from the company will be examined.