A listeria food poisoning outbreak that has killed three people and led to one pregnancy loss is linked to newly recalled heat-and-eat chicken fettucine alfredo products sold at Kroger and Walmart stores, federal health officials said late Tuesday.
The outbreak, which includes at least 17 people in 13 states, began last July, officials said. At least 16 people have been hospitalized.
FreshRealm, a large food producer with sites in California, Georgia and Indiana, is recalling products made before June 17. The recall includes these products, which were sold in the refrigerated sections of retail stores:
— 32.8-ounce trays of Marketside Grilled Chicken Alfredo with Fettucine Tender Pasta with Creamy Alfredo Sauce, White Meat Chicken and Shaved Parmesan Cheese with best-by dates of June 27 or earlier.
— 12.3-ounce trays of Marketside Grilled Chicken Alfredo with Fettucine Tender Pasta with Creamy Alfredo Sauce, White Meat Chicken, Broccoli and Shaved Parmesan Cheese with best-by dates of June 26 or earlier.
— 12.5-ounce trays of Home Chef Heat & Eat Chicken Fettucine Alfredo with Pasta, Grilled White Meat Chicken and Parmesan Cheese, with best-by dates of June 19 or earlier.
The strain of listeria bacteria that made people sick was found in a sample of chicken fettucine alfredo during a routine inspection in March, U.S. Agriculture Department officials said. That product was destroyed and never sent to stores.
Officials said they have not identified the specific source of the contamination. Cases have been identified through retail shopper records and interviews with sick people.
The listeria strain tied to the outbreak has been detected in people who fell ill between July 24 and May 10, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. The deaths were in Illinois, Michigan and Texas. Cases have been reported in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
The number of sick people is likely higher than now known and cases may be detected in additional states. Officials are continuing to receive reports of illnesses linked to the product and “are concerned that contamination is still occurring," the CDC said.
Consumers shouldn't eat the products, which may be in their refrigerators or freezers. They should be thrown away or returned to the place of purchase.
Listeria infections can cause serious illness, particularly in older adults, people with weakened immune systems and those who are pregnant or their newborns. Symptoms include fever, muscle aches, headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance and convulsions.
About 1,600 people get sick each year from listeria infections and about 260 die, the CDC said. Federal officials in December said they were revamping protocols to prevent listeria infections after several high-profile outbreaks, including one linked to Boar's Head deli meats that led to 10 deaths and more than 60 illnesses last year.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
FILE - A sign marks the entrance to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, on Oct. 8, 2013. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)
This 1966 transmission electron microscope image provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a Listeria bacterium with its flagella, in the process of cell division. (Graham Heid/CDC via AP)
NAIVASHA, Kenya (AP) — When Dickson Ngome first leased his farm at Lake Naivasha in Kenya’s Rift Valley in 2008, it was over 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from shore. The farm was on 1.5 acres (0.6 hectares) of fertile land where he grew vegetables to sell at local markets.
At the time, the lake was receding and people were worried that it might dry up altogether. But since 2011, the shore has crept ever closer. The rains started early this year, in September, and didn't let up for months.
One morning in late October, Ngome and his family woke up to find their home and farm inside the lake. The lake levels had risen overnight and about a foot of water covered everything.
“It seemed as if the lake was far from our homes,” Ngome’s wife, Rose Wafula, told The Associated Press. “And then one night we were shocked to find our houses flooded. The water came from nowhere.”
The couple and their four children have had to leave home and are camping out on the first floor of an abandoned school nearby.
Some 5,000 people were displaced by the rise in Lake Naivasha’s levels this year. Some scientists attribute the higher levels to increased rains caused by climate change, although there may be other factors causing the lake’s steady rise over the past decade.
The lake is a tourism hot spot and surrounded by farms, mostly growing flowers, which have gradually been disappearing into the water as the lake levels rise.
Rising levels have not been isolated to Naivasha: Kenya’s Lake Baringo, Lake Nakuru and Lake Turkana — all in the Rift Valley — have been steadily rising for 15 years.
“The lakes have risen almost beyond the highest level they have ever reached,” said Simon Onywere, who teaches environmental planning at Kenyatta University in Kenya’s capital Nairobi.
A study in the Journal of Hydrology last year found that lake areas in East Africa increased by 71,822 square kilometers (27,730 square miles) between 2011 and 2023. That affects a lot of people: By 2021, more than 75,000 households had been displaced across the Rift Valley, according to a study commissioned that year by the Kenyan Environment Ministry and the United Nations Development Program.
In Baringo, the submerged buildings that made headlines in 2020 and 2021 are still underwater.
“In Lake Baringo, the water rose almost 14 meters,” Onywere said. “Everything went under, completely under. Buildings will never be seen again, like the Block Hotels of Lake Baringo.”
Lake Naivasha has risen steadily too, “engulfing three quarters of some flower farms,” Onywere said.
Horticulture is a major economic sector in Kenya, generating just over a billion U.S. dollars in revenue in 2024 and providing 40% of the volume of roses sold in the European Union, according to Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Significant research has gone into the reasons behind the rising lakes phenomenon: A 2021 study on the rise of Kenya’s Rift Valley lakes was coauthored by Kenyan meteorologist Richard Muita, who is now acting assistant director of the Kenya Meteorological Department.
“There are researchers who come up with drivers that are geological, others with reasons like planetary factors,” Muita said. “The Kenya Meteorological Department found that the water level rises are associated with rainfall patterns and temperature changes. When the rains are plentiful, it aligns with the increase in the levels of the Rift Valley lake waters.”
Sedimentation is also a factor. “From the research I have read, there’s a lot of sediment, especially from agricultural related activities, that flows into these lakes,” says Muita.
Naivasha’s official high water mark was demarcated at 1,892.8 meters (6,210 feet) above sea level by the Riparian Association in 1906, and is still used by surveyors today. That means this year’s flooding was still almost a meter (3 feet) below the high mark.
It also means that the community of Kihoto on Lake Naivasha where the Ngomes lived lies on riparian land — land that falls below the high water mark, and can only be owned by the government.
“It’s a mess established by the government … towards the late 1960s,” said Silas Wanjala, general manager of the Lake Naivasha Riparian Association, which was founded some 120 years ago and has been keeping meticulous records of the lake’s water levels since.
Back then, a farmer was given a “temporary agricultural lease” on Kihoto, said Wanjala. When it later flooded and the farmer packed up and left, the farmworkers stayed on the land and later applied for subdivisions, which were approved. In the 60-odd years since, a whole settlement has grown on land that is officially not for lease or sale.
This also isn’t the first time it’s been flooded, said Wanjala. It's just very rare that the water comes up this high. That’s little consolation for the people who have been displaced by this year’s floods and now cannot go home without risking confrontations with hippopotamuses.
To support those people, the county is focusing its efforts on where the need is greatest.
“We are tackling this as an emergency," says Joyce Ncece, chief officer for disaster management in Nakuru County, which oversees Lake Naivasha. “The county government has provided trucks to help families relocate. We have been helping to pay rent for those who lack the finances.”
Scientists like Onywere and Muita are hoping for longer-term solutions. “Could we have predicted this so that we could have done better infrastructure in less risk-prone areas?” Onywere said.
Muita wants to see a more concerted global effort to combat climate change, as well as local, nature-based solutions centered on Indigenous knowledge, such as “conservation agriculture, where there is very limited disturbance of the land,” to reduce sedimentation of the lakes.
But all of this is of little help to Ngome and Wafula, who are still living at the school with their children. As the rest of the world looks forward to the holidays and new year, their future is uncertain. Lake Naivasha’s continuous rise over the past 15 years does not bode well: They have no idea when, or if, their farm will ever be back on dry land.
For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse
The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Residential buildings are submerged after Lake Naivasha swelled and flooded homes, in Kihoto Village, in Naivasha, Kenya's Rift Valley region, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)
People use a boat to cross floodwaters as residential buildings remain submerged after Lake Naivasha swelled and inundated homes, displacing people in Kihoto Village, in Naivasha, Kenya's Rift Valley region, on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)
A man salvages his belongings after Lake Naivasha swelled and inundated homes, displacing hundreds in Kihoto Village, in Naivasha, Kenya's Rift Valley region, on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)
Residential buildings are submerged after Lake Naivasha swelled and flooded homes, displacing hundreds in Kihoto Village, in Naivasha, Kenya's Rift Valley region, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)
A man paddles a boat next to flooded buildings after Lake Naivasha swelled and inundated homes, displacing hundreds in Kihoto Village in Naivasha, Kenya's Rift Valley region, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)
