Health officials have warned consumers to make sure they fully cook frozen meat and poultry products, in the wake of several Salmonella infections linked to frozen chicken entrees sold in Minnesota and Michigan. The entrees implicated in Minnesota were sold at Cub Foods stores under the Cub name.
Four cases of salmonellosis have been linked with frozen, prebrowned stuffed chicken entrees in Minnesota, the Minnesota Department of Health reported in a news release yesterday.
"While these products are breaded and prebrowned, and so may appear to be precooked, they are in fact still raw and need to be prepared accordingly," Minnesota State Epidemiologist Dr. Harrry Hull said in the news release. An FSIS statement said consumers heated the products in microwave ovens and might not have realized they contained raw chicken. Such products should be cooked to an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit.
Cub voluntarily pulled the implicated product lots from store shelves, the MDH said. Cub officials told MDH they would redesign the labels before putting the products back on shelves.