Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published an analysis of a Salmonella outbreak linked to vegan cheese made from cashews. The 2021 outbreak linked to Jule’s cashew brie marked the second time since 2014 that illnesses in multiple states were linked to cashew cheese.
Does vegan cheese pose a food safety risk? If it’s made from nuts, it might.
Cashews and Kill Steps
The CDC’s 2021 report on the Jule’s brie Salmonella outbreak states that whole genome sequencing tests on the Salmonella strain cultured from patients produced the same genetic “fingerprint,” meaning the patients were exposed to the same source of contaminated food. Investigators found this outbreak strain in samples of Jule’s cheese, in the facility where it was made, and in the specific lot of raw cashews used to make the cheese.
The CDC’s recent analysis of the outbreak states that U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigators identified cashews as the ingredient that was the likely source of contamination and noted that no lethality treatment, or “kill step” such as pasteurization or irradiation was performed before cashew processing.
Similarly, a kill step was also omitted in the manufacture of The Cultured Kitchen cashew cheese linked to the 2014 Salmonella outbreak. Tests performed during that investigation revealed the presence of the outbreak strain in samples of the cheese collected from a patient’s home and in a batch of fermenting, raw, cashews collected from the facility where the product was made.
FoodWorld 