Processed meats caused South Africa’s deadly Listeria outbreak

South African Minister of Health Doctor Aaron Motsoaledi has announced the cause of the country’s deadly Listeria outbreak to be two unrelated batches of ‘polony’–a sausage made of pork and beef, by food producers Tiger Brands (part of Enterprise Foods) and Rainbow Chicken Limited (RCL).

Motsoaledi warned members of the public to avoid ready-to-eat processed meat products.

“While we know that polony is definitely implicated, there is a risk of cross-contamination of other ready-to-eat processed meat products, either at production, distribution or retail,” he said in a statement.

“This is because Listeria on the exterior casing (packaging) of polony can be transferred to other products it comes into contact with, including viennas, russians, frankfurters, other sausages, and other ‘cold meat’ products that are typically not cooked before eating.”

Listeria is a bacterium found in meat and dairy products and causes Listeriosis – a severe infection with a 27% mortality rate in South Africa. The outbreak has led to 180 deaths nationwide over the past year.

“The meat processing industry was not cooperating for months. They did not bring the samples as requested. We had long suspected that listeria can be found in these products,” said Ministry of Health communications director Popo Maja regarding the outbreak. “It is not that we are incompetent, or that we have inadequate resources.”

Tiger Brands and RCL have been hit financially due to the Listeria epidemic. Consumers have lost confidence in the food manufacturers, lining up outside of stores to return their potentially fatal products, while investors have withdrawn and share prices in Tiger Brands have fallen by 13%.

However, Standard Bank analyst Sumil Seeraj believes the firms will suffer too much in terms of profit losses, saying: “The big hit is going to come with inventory write-offs because they are recalling all these products,” he said. “That’s most likely where they will lose because the inventory write-off will affect operating profit from that division.”