Australia - Melon Listeria Outbreak Kills 3 (Video)

Three people died and 15 elderly people are at risk after they all became sick from eating rockmelon from a grower in the state of New South Wales.

The pieces of rockmelon that had been contaminated were all pre-packaged. For this reason, the Australian melon industry has decided it will now review how it packs its fruit.

The Riverina rockmelon grower (which is where the contamination started) has ceased production whilst crisis talks were held between the Australian Melon Association and the various supermarket associations to pull the products from the shelves.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">A Victorian is the third person to die from an outbreak of listeria linked to contaminated rockmelon. <a href="https://t.co/K5KAvE3Xh0">https://t.co/K5KAvE3Xh0</a></p>&mdash; Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) <a href="https://twitter.com/SkyNewsAust/status/969715961145126912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 2, 2018</a></blockquote>

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Ms Dianne Fullelove, of the Australian Melon Association, said: “The retailers were very supportive of the industry.”

“Going forward we will assess how we manage packing sheets and hopefully start some research in this space to make sure we give the growers the latest information.”

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Rockmelon Warning: Two people have died and several others have fallen ill following a listeria outbreak. <a href="https://t.co/rRlPXZbTLP">https://t.co/rRlPXZbTLP</a></p>&mdash; 7 News Brisbane (@7NewsBrisbane) <a href="https://twitter.com/7NewsBrisbane/status/968758422345797634?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 28, 2018</a></blockquote>

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As to the grower where the contamination started, Ms Fullelove said: “No one wants to grow fruit that makes someone sick. He has a very good food-safety system in place but there has been a problem. He’s bending over backwards to work out where that problem is.”

The Australian government sent out a warning via the Food Safety Information Council. Their spokeswoman Ms Lydia Buchtmann said: “Listeria is found widely in the environment and rarely causes serious illness in the general population but for vulnerable people it can be extremely serious or even life-threatening.”

Source:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-43269136