Consumers are urged not to eat Locatelli Ricotta Salata cheese imported from Italy with packaging marked "SELL BY 01/21/08". The US Georgia Department of Agriculture has found Listeria monocytogenes in a sample.

The Centre for Food Safety has contacted the Italian Consulate for more information and is closely monitoring the situation. Retailers should stop selling that batch of the cheese.

Listeria symptoms include fever, headache, vomiting and diarrhoea. Healthy people rarely develop symptoms, but its effect on pregnant women, newborns, the elderly and people with lowered immunity can be severe and cause miscarriage and meningitis.