Tiger Brands, which owns Enterprise Foods, on Sunday issued a statement following an announcement by the health department that the outbreak of listeriosis, which has claimed 180 lives in South Africa, has been traced to an Enterprise Foods facility in Polokwane.
This is the company's unedited statement:
Enterprise Foods was alerted today [Sunday] about the need to recall identified Enterprise products.
We are all extremely concerned by Listeriosis - we all want to find the source or sources of Listeriosis, together with government. As a company that prioritises the health and safety of consumers above all else, we are committed to ensuring that all Enterprise products, as identified, will be recalled as part of the directive received. We are working very closely with the officials at present to conduct the process and will provide updates to the public on this matter.
The company proactively amplified its testing for Listeria and can confirm that we had found a low detection of a strain of listeria in some products on 14 February but the presence of the ST6 strain has not been confirmed by our tests. The company has furthermore sent its samples to an external laboratory to test for the strain itself and should receive the results tomorrow.
We have been actively engaging the Department of Health and the NICD on our findings and have openly collaborated with the DoH and the NICD on these findings and the actions taken to date to actively address our findings. We await confirmation of the strain testing to confirm the strain. In the meantime, we reaffirm our commitment to recall the identified Enterprise products as soon as possible.