Cheese recall sparks warning for consumers

Tillamook County Creamery Association is warning consumers that packages of cheese sold at Costco stores may contain “foreign plastic material.”

Costco shoppers who purchased certain 32-ounce “twin pack” containers of sliced Tillamook Colby Jack and Tillamook Monterey Jack cheeses were urged to return the products in a letter that Tillamook Executive Vice President Mike Bever sent on Saturday to affected members of the warehouse club.

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“Costco records indicate that you, or one of your add-on members, have purchased a 32 oz. twin-pack package of Tillamook Colby Jack and Tillamook Monterey Jack cheese slices (item number 651195) between May 9 and May 31, 2024,” Bever’s letter reads.

“Tillamook has identified a very small quantity of gray and black plastic pieces that may be present in a limited quantity of Monterey Jack Cheese that is included in [the packages], with a ‘Best If Used By’ date of October 22, 2024, produced only for Costco locations in the Northwest region,” it continues.

The letter goes on to urge Costco members who purchased the cheese to “please refrain from consuming” it and to instead “return the package to your local Costco for a full refund,” with Bever writing that the product had been pulled from stores out of “an abundance of caution.”

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“If you have already consumed the product without issue, you do not need to take any action, as the likely presence of the foreign plastic material is very minimal,” the letter concludes, while sharing images of the packages.

Customers with additional “issues or concerns” were asked to contact the company via email at hello@tillamook.com or over the phone at 855-562-3568.

Although all of the affected cheese packages were distributed to Costco locations in the Northwest, it was not clear how many packages may have been consumed, or if any associated illnesses or injuries had occurred.

Newsweek reached out for comment to Costco via online press contact form on Thursday.

At the time of publication, the Tillamook/Costco recall had not been listed on the websites of the Food and Drug Administration or the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), both of which commonly share recall announcements.

The presence of foreign matter like plastic is a relatively common cause for food recalls. FSIS reported that there had been a total of 10 recalls in 2023 for “extraneous material,” amounting to 393,708 pounds of recalled products.

Last month, a public health alert that appeared on the FSIS website warned consumers that some packages of “apco” brand raw pork chorizo distributed to H-E-B grocery stores in Texas “may be contaminated with a foreign material, specifically hard plastic and metal.”

Concerns about plastic material in chicken soup dumplings sold at Trader Joe’s stores sparked a similar recall for “foreign materials” in March, with a company spokesperson reportedly saying at the time that Trader Joe’s was “aggressively investigating potential problems and removing the product from sale.”