According to a talk I saw FDA food safety and D- and Z-value guru Don Zink give earlier this year, infant formula producers have cleaned-up their act, microbiologically speaking. There used to be a bunch of Cronobacter sakazakii (or is that Enterobacter sakazakii?) floating around in the plants, but over the past ten years routine sampling has apparently found little in the final products. Don didn’t talk a lot about Salmonella in the ingredients used in those products.

Salmonella can be a problem with low-moisture foods (like peanut butter, dried spices), and now Dutch infant formula. According to HKSAR Government, health authorities are asking parents to avoid TwoBebes Growing up Milk from the Netherlands.

The Centre for Food Safety (CFS) today (July 19) urged parents not to let their toddlers consume a kind of powdered formula for young children manufactured in the Netherlands, which might contain Salmonella. The trade should also stop selling the product concerned.

"The CFS received notification from the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed of the European Commission (EC) that a kind of dietary fibre (Galacto-oligosaccharide, GOS), produced in Korea, was detected with Salmonella by the Netherlands authorities," a CFS spokesman said.

"Investigation revealed that the dietary fibre had been supplied to the manufacturers of powdered formula for infants/young children in the Netherlands. The powdered formula they produced may, therefore, also be contaminated," he added.

Quoting the information provided by the EC, the spokesman said that one kind of powdered formula for young children, which might be affected, has been exported to Hong Kong.