One line in the FDA’s latest enforcement report covers a single product: Made Fresh brand Black Bean and Corn Salad, sold in a five-pound white plastic tub, recalled because it may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. The agency places the recall in its most serious tier, with the distribution pattern given as New York.
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The record is the formal end of a process that began in early September, when Made Fresh Salads Inc. of Bay Shore, New York, pulled dozens of ready-to-eat deli salads and cream cheeses after sampling turned up the bacterium inside its own plant. What changed in October is the classification, and with it the FDA’s official judgment of how dangerous the products are.
The FDA’s enforcement entry for the tub
The enforcement report entry carries FDA event ID 99833, and its recall-number field is blank, so the event ID is the identifier that ties it to the firm’s announcement. The recall is firm-initiated and voluntary, with an initiation date of September 4, 2026. The FDA assigned its classification on October 14, and the entry was published in the report of October 21 with the status “Ongoing.” The reason for recall reads: “Products may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.” The quantity field says “Unknown,” and the code information gives expiration dates from September 3 to September 18, 2026.
The expiry window sits well in the past: the last date on the codes, September 18, came more than a month before the report appeared. The firm’s own notice adds that retailers may have repacked the salads, so the printed coding can differ from store to store.
Environmental sampling at Made Fresh Salads
Made Fresh Salads’ announcement on FDA’s recall site, dated September 6, 2026, explains the origin: environmental sampling by the FDA and by the company found positive Listeria results in some areas of the facility. The company said it had stopped production and distribution while it investigates the cause. No illnesses had been reported when the notice went out.
The black bean and corn salad is one entry in a long list. The announcement names it among the five-pound salads, alongside chickpea, crab, shrimp, egg, tuna, quinoa and a long run of pasta salads, then adds 30-pound tubs of potato salad, macaroni salad and coleslaw, aluminum trays of pudding, croquettes and crab cakes, and cream cheese flavors under the Made Fresh Salads and Northside labels. Delivery went directly to retail stores and distributors in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and New York City, and retailers may have repacked the products, so the code a customer sees varies by store. Food Safety News described the same recall as dozens of varieties on September 8.
The report logs products individually; the Stewart’s Shops ice cream recall in the same report, for instance, appears as two separate records. A single tub from a sprawling recall can therefore surface weeks later as a standalone line.
Forty days from recall to classification
The sequence of dates is the useful part of the record. The recall began September 4, the company’s notice reached the FDA’s recall page on September 6, and the agency did not assign its classification until October 14, forty days after initiation. The enforcement report that made the classification public followed a week later. During that interval the product was already off the market on the company’s say-so, since the firm stopped production and distribution while it and the FDA investigated; the top-tier label records the agency’s assessment after the fact and does not start or stop a recall on its own.
The scale of the underlying recall explains why a single tub merits a line of its own. By the count of the product list on the FDA page, the recall reaches more than sixty items: 36 five-pound deli salads, three 30-pound salads, four aluminum-tray desserts and appetizers, and 25 cream cheese and spread varieties under the Made Fresh Salads and Northside names. Black bean and corn is one of the 36, and its record is the one the report singles out.
What the top recall tier means for a Listeria case
The highest of the agency’s three-tier recall scale, reserved for products the FDA judges reasonably likely to cause serious injury or death. Class II sits below it, for harm that is temporary or medically reversible, and Class III is for products unlikely to hurt anyone. The salad went into the top tier.
The firm’s notice spells out the health stakes for Listeria: serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people and others with weakened immune systems; short-term high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea in healthy people; and miscarriages and stillbirths among pregnant women. Customers were told to return products to the place of purchase for a full refund, and the company lists a New York phone line, (718) 765-0082, weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern.
The record leaves one number open. The FDA’s quantity field reads “Unknown,” so the report gives no count of how many five-pound tubs of black bean and corn salad were made, and the status stays “Ongoing” with the top-tier classification dated October 14. The pathogen behind the recall is tracked nationally: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates about 1,250 Listeria infections and 172 deaths in the United States each year, concentrated among pregnant women, newborns, adults 65 and older and people with weakened immune systems.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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