France Recalls Ash-Coated Goat Cheeses Sold Directly at a Farm Over STEC O103 E. coli

On September 25, RappelConso announced the voluntary recall of round ash-coated goat cheeses, with no commercial brand, sold exclusively through direct sales at a farm in the Loir-et-Cher department, in central France, due to the possible presence of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) of serogroup O103. The cheeses were sold between August 30 and September 5, and the authority asked consumers not to eat them, to return them to the point of sale or destroy them, with a refund for buyers.

The notice reminds consumers that STEC can cause, in the week after consumption, sometimes bloody diarrhea, abdominal pain and vomiting, with serious kidney complications in 5% to 8% of cases, mainly in children. Among its health recommendations, the notice includes avoiding the consumption of raw milk and products made with raw milk among the most vulnerable groups.

O103 is one of the non-O157 STEC serogroups most often associated with illness in Europe, and its presence in farm cheeses is a recurring risk in France: contamination usually originates in the herd or during milking and reaches the cheese when the milk does not receive a heat treatment that eliminates it. In soft cheeses with a natural rind, such as ash-coated goat cheeses, the manufacturing process offers no subsequent barrier capable of compensating for that initial contamination.

For TAAG, this recall shows that STEC surveillance in dairy cannot be limited to O157: farmhouse cheese producers need methods that detect Shiga toxin genes and the priority serogroups in milk and in cheese, because a search restricted to O157 would miss precisely the type of strain that prompted this notice.