Most of Suspected Mexican-Style Cheese Removed From Stores

State health officials have rounded up nearly all of the Mexican-style cheese that has been linked to three illnesses in Arizona, but the cheese manufacturer’s future is uncertain following the adverse publicity.

Nearly 6,000 pounds of Rodeo Industries Inc.’s seven varieties of soft, white cheese distributed in California have been collected, Stuart Richardson, head of the food and drug division of the state Department of Food and Agriculture, said Friday. The cheese--ordered recalled Wednesday after listeria bacteria were found in some cheese samples--will be disposed of promptly.

Rodeo Industries Vice President David Lopez said Friday that the firm will not be able to survive a lengthy shutdown. The company, he said, will decide by Tuesday if it can stay afloat. The City of Industry firm employs 15 workers, and Lopez said they will be laid off if the company stays closed much longer.

“We have creditors knocking on our doors already,” Lopez said. “If the public is willing to accept that we got a raw deal and is willing to take us back, then great--we’ll do everything we can.

“But if we can’t make payrolls soon, then everyone’s going to have to find jobs somewhere else.” Lopez added that he has no idea how the bacteria showed up in the firm’s plant.

Manager Hears on Radio

Rodeo Industries manufactured about 1,500 pounds of cheese a week.

In Santa Ana, Henry Sanchez, manager of Shoppers Rancho supermarket, heard from a radio newscast about the latest recall of a Mexican-style cheese.

“I didn’t even have time to think. We had to get (it) off the shelves,” Sanchez said Friday.

So did county workers, who on Thursday found 762 packages of the Rodeo Industries Inc. brand cheeses still on the shelves of 29 Orange County stores concentrated mostly in Latino communities, said Bob Merryman, county environmental health director.

No illnesses were reported in Orange County, where health officials are running tests on some of the samples.

Of approximately 1,100 supermarkets and grocery stores surveyed in Orange County this week, 66 carried the Mexican-style cheese. While most complied immediately with the orders to remove the cheeses from store shelves at those 29 stores, the product “would have remained on the shelf had we not gone to those locations,” Merryman said.

Staff Got Word Out

“Even though it’s on the news and even though newspapers carry it, a lot of people don’t pay a lot of attention,” said Merryman, who praised his staff for “getting the word out to the people in Orange County.”

Rodeo Industries began production just two weeks after Artesia-based Jalisco Mexican Products was closed down after being tied to 40 listeriosis-related deaths in California.

Merryman said this recall, compared to the Jalisco case, “was a lot easier” because the Rodeo cheese apparently is not used by restaurants. Last June, Orange County workers set out to check both retail establishments and Hispanic restaurants--up to 8,000 businesses, Merryman said.

Officials at Rodeo Industries maintain--and state health reports back them up--that they have operated all their pasteurization and sanitation procedures properly.

While state-mandated daily Listeria monocytogenes bacteria inspections were scaled down to weekly inspections after the first of this year, agriculture department spokeswoman Jan Wessell said that the kind of inspections performed on site would not have detected the bacteria.

Focus on Cheese Curd

“There’s no reason to have full-time inspectors at manufacturing plants,” Wessell said. “When we do our checking, we check the curd because it is the most representative sample.”

The curd, however, is milk in its pre-pasteurized form, while the listeria in the latest outbreak is apparently a result of post-pasteurization contamination at the plant.

Complete test results to pinpoint the cause of this outbreak will not be available before Monday at the earliest but could take as long as four weeks to complete, Richardson said.

The plant will remain closed at least until then.

Bill Brown, an attorney for Rodeo, said the firm was suspended earlier this week by the state Franchise Tax Board because of an “oversight.” “The tax issue,” he said Friday, “will be remedied today or tomorrow.”

Earlier reports that the bacteria were found in the Queso Fresco brand were in error, Gordon Scott, consumer affairs officer for the federal Food and Drug Administration, said Friday. The contaminated cheese was the Adobera brand. Eight other brands in four Western states were recalled as a precaution.