Waste pickers should avoid eating discarded polony: CSIR

Waste pickers are finding significant amounts of polony and other processed food products in rubbish bins and are eating it as many are not aware of the listeriosis outbreak.

On Sunday‚ the health department announced that the strain of listeria bacteria was found at an Enterprise Foods manufacturing facility in Limpopo.

Since January last year‚ 180 people have died of listeriosis.

The announcement on Sunday has resulted in households disposing of a variety of processed food products including polony‚ Russians and viennas.

This meant waste pickers were discovering large amounts of the potentially deadly food‚ some of which has not been opened.

The Centre for the Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has made a plea to waste pickers not to eat these products.

CSIR said information it received from a member of its waste pickers’ research network‚ Dr Melanie Samson‚ stated that waste reclaimers were finding significant amounts of polony and other processed meat in rubbish bins and eating it as many were not aware of the listeriosis outbreak.

Samson said it was urgent that waste pickers were alerted of listeriosis and the grave dangers of eating this discarded food. They should also know where to go if they became sick.