Share this story

2 million baked goods are recalled over listeria risk

(NYT) — About 2 million baked goods, including some doughnuts and coffee rolls sold at Dunkin’, were recalled over concerns of potential contamination with the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes, federal safety regulators said.

ADVERTISING

The manufacturer FGF Brands, which distributes baked goods in the United States and Canada, issued the voluntary recall because of the “potential for contamination with Listeria monocytogenes,” according to a report released Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration.

The recalled products include a mix of chocolate, raspberry and Bavarian doughnuts; French crullers; éclairs; and coffee rolls. Some of the goods were sold at Dunkin’, and were produced before Dec. 13, 2024, the FDA said. The suspected source of the contamination was not identified.

The agency did not say what steps consumers should follow regarding the recall and did not say if there had been any illnesses related to the recalled baked goods. FGF Brands and Dunkin’ did not immediately respond to inquiries Sunday.

Listeria is the third leading cause of death from food-borne illness in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Typical symptoms include fever and headaches. Most people who ingest food contaminated with listeria do not get sick, but pregnant women, older people, newborns and people with weakened immune systems can become seriously ill or die, according to the CDC.

Georgia man sentenced to 475 years for dogfighting

(NYT) — A Georgia man who authorities said kept more than 100 dogs in cruel conditions at his home has been sentenced to 475 years in prison after being found guilty last month of dogfighting and cruelty to animals, prosecutors said.

The man, Vincent Lemark Burrell, 57, of Dallas, Georgia, was found guilty by a jury on Jan. 30 of 93 counts of dogfighting and 10 counts of cruelty to animals.

The verdict came after a four-day trial in which authorities said they had found 107 dogs, many of them underweight, scarred and missing teeth, chained up in his yard in 2022, the Paulding County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

Judge Dean C. Bucci of the Paulding County Superior Court gave Burrell the maximum possible sentence.

Authorities had been acting on a search warrant issued after an Amazon driver raised concerns about the welfare of the dogs, which the driver said he saw chained in the yard, according to the statement.

Officers sent to Burrell’s house in Dallas, which is about 32 miles outside Atlanta, found the dogs, most of them pit bulls, without access to food or water, the Paulding County Sheriff’s Office said at the time.

The dogs, some of which were emaciated, had been tied with heavy chains to trees and left with little to no shelter. Others were boarded in the basement of Burrell’s house, where the odor of urine and feces was so strong that officers had to wear protective equipment to enter, the Sheriff’s Office said.

They also discovered “numerous items associated with dogfighting,” including a chicken used to entice the dogs, a stick to pry open their jaws, a kit used to treat them after fights and “documents linking Burrell’s dogs to other known dog fighters,” according to the statement by the district attorney’s office.