Cal-Maine, nation’s largest egg seller, adds 800,000 dozen eggs to recall

Cal-Maine adds 800,000 dozen eggs to recall

JACKSON, Miss. — Cal-Maine Foods Inc., the nation’s largest egg seller and distributor, said it is recalling about 800,000 dozen eggs related to an expanded recall tied to a salmonella outbreak.

Cal-Maine said it was notified by an Iowa egg producer that between April 9 and Aug. 19, the producer sold 32 truckloads of eggs, or about 800,000 dozen eggs, to the company. The affected products were added Friday to the expanded nationwide recall related to almost 2,000 illnesses from the strain of salmonella reported between May and July, almost 1,300 more than usual.

It wasn’t immediately clear which Iowa producer supplied the Cal-Maine eggs. Iowa’s Hillandale Farms said Friday that it was recalling its eggs after laboratory tests confirmed illnesses associated with them. The company did not say how many eggs were being recalled or if it is connected to Wright County Egg, another Iowa farm that recalled 380 million eggs earlier this week.

Cal-Maine said the 800,000 dozen eggs account for about 0.3 percent of its total sales for that period.

“Cal-Maine has been actively monitoring this situation, and as soon as we learned of the expanded recall, we immediately began notifying the affected customers,” said Cal-Maine President Dolph Baker. “None of the eggs were produced in Cal-Maine’s facilities or operations.”

The most common symptoms of salmonella are diarrhea, abdominal cramps and fever within eight hours to 72 hours of eating a contaminated product. It can be life-threatening, especially to those with weakened immune systems.

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www.eggsafety.org