INAE seizes Listeriosis-linked foods – Mozambique

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INAE seizes Listeriosis-linked foods – Mozambique

11:35 CAT | 06 Mar 2018

File photo: For illustration purposes only

Mozambique’s National Institute of Economic Activities (INAE) has seized 163 kilograms of meat products suspected of being contaminated with Listeriosis bacteria, the agency said on Monday.

“Teams on the ground were ordered to seize the meat in the provinces,” INAE provincial delegate in Maputo Rodrigo Chiure said, according to Radio Mozambique.

According to Chiure, the products were seized in outlets in Matola, on the outskirts of the Mozambican capital.

The seizures came after Mozambique’s health authorities on Monday recommended that processed meat products such as sausages and polony from South African Enterprise and Rainbow Chicken Limited factories be disposed of.

The Mozambican government said in a statement that the Listeria monocytogenes bacterium had been identified and isolated in meat from those units, and that a Listeriosis outbreak in South Africa had killed 180 people.

Image result for listeriosis products — *File photo: For illustration purposes only*

Given the “proximity and intense commercial relations” between the two countries, and “as a way of avoiding the introduction of the disease” into Mozambique, the Mozambican Ministry of Health issued a recommendation to avoid consumption and ordered the products to be removed from the shelves.

Chiure said the Greater Maputo Region INAE visited 34 establishments on the first day of inspections, and that several companies had suspended sale of the products proactively.

Last Sunday, South Africa’s Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi announced that polony and products from an Enterprise Foods factory in Polokwane‚ Limpopo‚ are the source of the world’s largest outbreak of listeria registered in the country. “Avoid all processed meat products that are sold as ready to eat‚” said Motsoaledi. He told pregnant women to avoid any processed meat “like the plague”.

Source: Lusa / The Citizen SA