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You're may want to hold off on eating Nestlé Drumsticks for a bit, as the company has issued a voluntary nationwide recall of the ice cream desserts following positive test results for listeria in their Bakersfield factory. The recall is more of a better-safe-than-sorry one. According to the FDA, no one has been sickened and none of the actual Drumsticks have tested positive for listeria. However, pieces of production equipment at the factory have tested positive. Certain ice cream products were mistakenly sent out to stores because of an error in logging test results, according to the company.
Affected products include Drumstick 16-count Variety and 24-count Vanilla packs made between August 31 and September 17, KTLA reports. If you happen to have any of these lying around in your freezer, you should either return them or get in touch with Nestlé Consumer Services. You can find a list of affected product codes here.
Nestle disassociated this recall from that of Blue Bell ice cream, who issued a recall after 10 people in four states were sickened in spring of 2015.
Except for the coincidence that our recall involved both ice cream and listeria, our situation is much different from Blue Bell’s in a number of significant ways, including: (1) we have received no reports of human illnesses; (2) we have no listeria findings in the ice cream itself (just the equipment); (3) we have only one product line affected; (4) we have only one facility affected; and (5) we self-identified this event and took precautionary steps to recall product.
According to the CDC, listeria can be serious, especially when affecting older adults, pregnant women, babies, and those with weakened immune systems. Symptoms include fever, muscle aches and diarrhea.
