USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service issued a public health alert this morning for 8-ounce packages of “CURRY CHICKEN SALAD” made by Mary’s Harvest Fresh Foods, Inc. of Portland, Oregon, because the product may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. The salad was produced on July 22 and shipped to retail stores in Oregon and Washington. It carries establishment number P-39928 inside the USDA mark of inspection and a use-by date of 07/30/2026 — which is today.
No recall was requested, because, in FSIS’s words, the product is no longer available for purchase. That sentence has become the standard ending to these alerts, and it deserves more scrutiny than it gets. A use-by date expiring means the salad is off the shelf. It does not mean the salad is out of the house. Somebody bought an 8-ounce container of curry chicken salad on the 24th, put it in the back of the refrigerator behind the milk, and is going to eat it Saturday. That person is being warned on the last day the date is good, eight days after the product was made.
Listeria is the one pathogen for which “it’s still cold” offers no comfort at all. It grows at refrigeration temperature. It grows slowly on a deli salad sitting at 38 degrees, and it keeps growing past the date printed on the label. The people it kills are older adults, pregnant women and their newborns, and anyone whose immune system is compromised — the same people most likely to be eating a small ready-to-eat portion from the grocery store rather than cooking. Invasive listeriosis kills roughly one in five people who get it, and the incubation period runs as long as seventy days, which means an illness that starts in September will be nearly impossible to trace back to a container thrown out in July.
To Mary’s Harvest’s credit, the company found this itself. FSIS says the problem turned up during routine establishment testing, not agency sampling and not a sick consumer. That is the system working the way it is supposed to work. It is also the second time this establishment number has appeared in an FSIS announcement involving Listeria, after a 2018 recall of about 916 pounds of wraps and salads over a contaminated corn ingredient.
FSIS has not said how much product was involved. Nobody has been reported ill. Throw it out — do not taste it first. Anyone in Oregon or Washington who ate this salad and develops fever, muscle aches, headache, stiff neck, or confusion in the next two months should see a doctor and say so.