Nearly a dozen people have died in connection with a listeria outbreak linked to frozen protein shakes distributed in long-term care facilities and some hospitals nationwide.
The distributor, Lyons Magnus of Fort Wayne, Ind., announced the recall on Feb. 22 — even though it was reported to the Food and Drug Administration on November 25, 2024.
The frozen supplemental shakes are distributed as 4 oz. Lyons ReadyCare and Sysco Imperial Frozen Supplemental Shakes, manufactured by Prairie Farms Dairy, Inc. of Edwardsville, Illinois. Sysco, a wholesale food distributor, announced on Feb. 21 that it had recalled the shakes and had stopped buying other Lyons Magnus products supplied by the food corporation’s Fort Wayne, Indiana, facility.
The items were “distributed primarily to long-term care facilities and were not available for retail sale,” Lyons Magnus said in a statement. “As soon as Lyons Magnus learned of the issue, it took immediate action to halt the purchase of all products from the affected Prairie Farms facility, notify customers, and ensure that impacted products were removed from distribution nationally.”
The company gave no explanation for announcing the recall more than three months after the CDC was notified about the listeria outbreak. Yet the CDC itself still hasn’t issued a public alert about the listeria outbreak in the protein shakes — or a non-fatal salmonella outbreak tied to pastries distributed by a Canadian company earlier this year.
““The CDC site has not published anything about these two outbreaks or made an announcement of the recalls,” said Bill Marler, of the law firm Marler Clark, which represents victims in food safety cases. “It is imperative to have active reporting on recalls by our government officials to help prevent more illnesses. This is in the interest of public safety.”
The states with reported cases are Alabama, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and West Virginia.
Both the FDA and CDC are investigating the outbreak linked to protein shakes, which the CDC says actually dates back to 2018. Approximately 20 cases occurred in 2024 and 2025 a total of 38 people from 21 states have become ill including 37 hospitalizations and 11 deaths.
The latest outbreak comes amid a wave of serious illnesses and deaths stemming from contaminated food. Last year, tainted food caused more illnesses than in 2023, according to the U.S. PIRG Education Fund’s new report, Food for Thought 2025. Even more alarming: more than 500 people were hospitalized or died from food-borne illnesses in 2024, more than double the 2023 total.
Nearly 1,400 people became ill from consuming tainted food in 2024 and nearly all of them were tied to just 13 disease outbreaks of Listeria, Salmonella or E. coli.
Government food regulators define an outbreak of foodborne illness as “two or more people getting the same illness from the same contaminated food or drink.”