MANHATTAN — After 56 people in the city were found to have suffered salmonella poisoning from MealMart’s kosher broiled chicken livers that were not fully cooked, the Health Department issued a warning Wednesday to liver-eating New Yorkers, and the company yanked the food from shelves.
Twelve of the infected New Yorkers had to be hospitalized, health officials said.
Since February, the Health Department has been investigating the pattern of people reporting that they had eaten the broiled chicken livers or chopped liver before they got sick. This week, the agency confirmed the salmonella was linked to samples of kosher broiled chicken livers and liver made from the same broiled chicken liver produced by MealMart Company in Maspeth, Queens.
Cases of illness were also identified in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Minnesota.
Though consumers reported that they thought the product was fully cooked, the par-cooked product is not safe to eat without additional cooking, health officials explained.
The 10-pound boxes of chicken livers that MealMart sells to restaurants, delis and other food retailers that repackage the delicacy, are labeled as "broiled" and may appear cooked, but require the chicken livers to be cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit, health officials noted.
MealMart voluntarily reached out to its customers and withdrew the product, said MealMart's quality control manager Mordechai Milworn.
“The way a chicken liver is prepared, it has to be broiled to remove the blood [under kosher law] and then it has to be cooked,” Milworn said. “The boxes were marked that they were only broiled, not cooked. Apparently, what’s been occurring is that the establishments haven’t been handling it properly.”
Milworn said his company has been selling the broiled chicken livers for more than two decades but will no longer do so.
"From a regulatory point of view we got a clean bill of health," Milworn said. "But we felt there seems to be a problem in handling the product, so we said, let’s take it off the market. We will probably distribute it as a fully cooked product."
He added: "We do sell chicken livers that are fully cooked and there’s no problem with that."
Salmonella bacteria are frequently found in raw chicken or other uncooked meats, health officials said. The symptoms of infection include diarrhea, cramps and fever usually 12 to 72 hours after exposure.
The Health Department said 1,200 to 1,300 yearly cases of salmonella are diagnosed in New York City.
The Health Department’s website has a list of stores that carried the product.
