Virginia, ‘do not eat this cereal’

By: Katie O'Connor - July 17, 2018 7:08 am

Five of the 100 people recently sickened in a salmonella outbreak are Virginia residents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only four of the 33 states affected by the outbreak — tied to Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, the 65-year-old sweetened puffed wheat cereal — have more cases.

“Do not eat this cereal,” the federal agency posted to its Twitter page on July 12.

CDC advised retailers not to sell Honey Smacks with a “best if used by” date from June 2018 to June 2019, and told consumers to throw the cereal away even if some in their household had already been eaten and nobody was sick.

The CDC and U.S. Food and Drug Administration are still investigating the outbreak, which has been seen in 33 states, including Virginia, and caused 30 hospitalizations.

Salmonella causes diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps. Every year, the CDC estimates, there are about 1.2 million cases of Salmonella, 23,000 hospitalizations and 450 deaths. Most people recover within 4 to 7 days without treatment.

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Katie O'Connor

Katie, a Manassas native, has covered health care, commercial real estate, law, agriculture and tourism for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Richmond BizSense and the Northern Virginia Daily. Last year, she was named an Association of Health Care Journalists Regional Health Journalism Fellow, a program to aid journalists in making national health stories local and using data in their reporting. She is a graduate of the College of William and Mary, where she was executive editor of The Flat Hat, the college paper, and editor-in-chief of The Gallery, the college’s literary magazine.