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Salmonella concerns prompt dairy shakes warning

Don’t drink the dairy shakes. They might give you diarrhea.

Defense Department officials are warning all military personnel to temporarily avoid drinking dairy shakes found in Meals, Ready to Eat and Unitized Group Rations-Express because they might contain Salmonella.

“There is a remote chance that we might have some dairy shakes that could have some Salmonella,” Gerry Darsch, director of the DoD Combat Feeding Program, told Army Times on Wednesday.

That means that potentially there are about 12 million dairy shakes in MREs that could be affected, Darsch said.

Salmonella is a group of bacteria that can cause diarrheal illness in humans, according to the Center’s for Disease Control and Prevention website.

The Salmonella was detected in late June during routine testing of a single lot of dairy shakes, said Darsch, who became aware of the issue June 21.

The shakes in question affect MRE fieldings for 2008 and 2009, Darsch said.

The shakes are found in MRE menu number one: chili with beans; menu nine: beef stew; menu 21: tuna in a pouch; and menu 22: chicken and dumplings.

Menus one and nine will be found in MRE boxes marked Case A and menus 21 and 22 will be in MRE boxes marked Case B.

The dairy shakes are also part of six out of the eight Unitized Group Rations-Express menus, Darsch said. Darsch did not have the specific menus, or specific numbers of how many UGR-Es are affected but said personnel should not drink the dairy shakes in UGR-Es for 2008 and 2009.

For more, see the upcoming issue of Army Times.