If you’ve been caught up in the cottage cheese craze, take heed: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends that you toss tubs of cottage cheese purchased from Walmart stores in 24 states because of concerns the ingredients weren’t fully pasteurized.
The FDA issued an alert Thursday of a voluntary recall of Great Value brand cottage cheese made by Saputo Cheese USA, though no illnesses or hospitalizations associated with the recalled dairy products have been reported. The recall affects Great Value cottage cheese products with milkfat content of 0%, 2%, and 4%, various curd sizes, and containers ranging from 16 ounces to 3 pounds that were distributed to Walmart stores earlier this month.
The issue was discovered by Saputo Cheese, the manufacturer, during “pasteurizer troubleshooting exercises” and the impacted pasteurizer was subsequently fixed and returned to normal function, according to the recall details. The FDA is recommending that people not eat the affected Great Value cottage cheese and either throw away the tub or return it to the Walmart store where you purchased it.
“Consuming products that are not fully pasteurized can pose a significant health risk, especially to the young and elderly or immunocompromised individuals,” the FDA advisory cautions.
The affected products have “best if used by” dates in early April and were sold at Walmart stores in Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Tennessee, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
A lack of full pasteurization is a very atypical reason for an FDA recall. In fact, Thursday’s cottage cheese recall is the first instance among 850-plus recalls since March 2023 in which the reason cited was “not fully pasteurized.”
COTTAGE CHEESE CRAZE
Cottage cheese has become a favorite among social media foodie types in recent years thanks to its high protein content. Americans consumed roughly 2.4 pounds of cottage cheese in 2024, the most in 15 years, according to the latest figures on per-capita dairy consumption released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While cottage cheese is having a renaissance of sorts, it hasn’t yet returned to its 1970s glory days when Americans were eating 4.6 pounds, on average.
In January, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced new dietary guidelines that redesigned the food pyramid and encouraged Americans to consume more dairy, and particularly full-fat dairy, than in the recent past.
Thursday’s recall announcement and the FDA’s warning about consuming food that isn’t fully pasteurized might seem at odds with some additional rhetoric from the Trump administration. Before he was appointed Health Secretary Kennedy posted on X in October 2024 that he intended to end what he termed the “FDA’s war on public health” and called out the administration’s “aggressive suppression” of a variety of products including raw milk, which is unpasteurized.
The FDA falls under the Department of Health and Human Services and is led by Dr. Marty Makary, the commissioner. Any progress on creating standards for raw milk, as advocates were banking on, hasn’t happened yet and isn’t among the dozens of accomplishments that Makary touts on his X account for his first year as commissioner.
Neither Makary nor Kennedy have publicly commented about the cottage cheese recall.
