Trader Joe’s Recalls Batch Of Raw Cashews Over Salmonella Concerns

Trader Joe’s, which has more than 400 stores nationwide, is best known for packaging goods under its own name; about 80 percent of their products are branded as Trader Joe’s (or various questionably ethical ethnic versions, like Trader Jose’s, Trader Ming’s, and Trader Giotto’s). The company is notoriously secretive about the manufacturer of these products; certainly some of them come from the same factories as name-brand items, but there’s really no way to know.

That makes for a tricky situation when the company has to issue recalls, as we can’t exactly call up the manufacturer and see what went wrong. Our own information has to come directly from Trader Joe’s. Regardless, the company does keep a detailed list of all recalls. This isn’t the first time Trader Joe’s has struggled with salmonella – back in March of 2015, it was walnuts that were struck with possible contamination.

The latest of these is a recall on Trader Joe’s Raw Cashew Pieces, a certain lot of which was distributed from Maine to South Carolina in the east and as far west as Nebraska. Direct quote from Trader Joe’s:

We have been alerted by our supplier of Trader Joe’s Raw Cashew Pieces (barcode number 00505154) that there is a possibility that one specific lot with the following code may be contaminated with Salmonella: “BEST BEFORE 07.17.2016TF4”

The company says they’ve taken all bags of Trader Joe’s Raw Cashew Pieces down from stores (“out of an abundance of caution,” according to the release) and encourages all customers to look at their bags of nuts to make sure they have a different code. If you do have a bag with that code, don’t eat it; salmonella is a crazy-strong bacterium that can survive for months and has made tens of thousands of Americans sick each year. (That’s prompted a sort of arms race to find a weapon to fight it, interestingly.) The company notes that you can return any bags of these cashews to any store for a full refund.