In a news conference Thursday at company headquarters, company co-founder Greg Steltenpohl said: “It is very tough, to be honest, to be focused on health and nutrition all your life and have this incident happen.”Īsked whether they have assessed the potential financial effect of the recall and bad publicity on the company, Steltenpohl and Chief Executive Stephen Williamson said their “deepest concern is for the health and safety of our customers.”Īmong the products recalled were apple juice plus a variety of other products that contain apple juice. The stock had been as high as $28.75 over the last year.
Odwalla shares plunged $6.25 to $12.125 in heavy Nasdaq trading Thursday. Its promotional material boasts of its juice: “Drink it and thrive.”
Odwalla apple juice free#
The push for so-called natural food products-marketed as healthy because they are free of preservatives, colorings, pesticides and growth hormones-has created robust demand for products such as the fresh juices that have made a raging business success of Odwalla, based in the coastal city of Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco. “There’s no guarantee that most of the food you ingest is bacterially sterile at the time you ingest it.” “Eating can be hazardous to your health,” noted John Leedom, a USC professor of medicine who is also chief of the infectious diseases division. The illnesses kill as many as 7,000 people in the U.S. Each year, tainted meat, poultry, eggs and produce make millions of people ill in the United States, with estimates ranging widely from 6.5 million to more than 80 million. And it is similar, though not necessarily identical, to the strain that contaminated undercooked Jack in the Box hamburgers in the Western United States in 1993, killing four people and making 500 others ill.Ĭountless food products-from oysters to pineapples to gourmet ice cream to dry-cured salami-have been implicated recently in a rash of food-related illnesses. coli O157:H7-is closely related to the type that sickened more than 9,500 people in southern Japan this year in that nation’s worst food poisoning outbreak in a decade. coli illness after drinking apple cider from a Connecticut mill. The incident follows last week’s revelation that at least 10 people had become ill with symptoms of E. In Washington state, 10 of the 13 patients to date had consumed unpasteurized Odwalla apple juice. coli sickness probably were linked to Odwalla juice products, and four more were being investigated. Colorado state health officials said four cases of E. Investigators were evaluating three patients-in Los Angeles, Sacramento and the Bay Area-to determine whether the cases were indeed examples of E. Meanwhile, health officials in California and Colorado reported Thursday that they are investigating possible additional cases of E. Food and Drug Administration announced the voluntary recall of all Odwalla brand apple juice and juice blends containing apple juice after the California-made products were tied to an outbreak of a virulent strain of bacteria that causes severe diarrhea and can be fatal. Makers of apple juice products linked to the illnesses of 13 young people in the Seattle area scrambled to pull the beverages from grocery shelves in California and elsewhere Thursday, the latest in a string of incidents raising safety concerns about the food supply.
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