If you’ve got cheese in your fridge that came from a farmers market, a small grocery, or a Latin food store anywhere on the East Coast, go check the label before you do anything else. A cheese recall that started small in early June 2026 has ballooned into something a lot bigger, and the company at the center of it is now yanking every single cheese it makes off the shelves.
This is one of those situations where the story keeps getting worse every time officials post an update. What began as a recall of one soft cheese has turned into a full-line recall tied to a multistate outbreak that has already been connected to one death and ten hospitalizations. Here’s what happened, what’s pulled, and how to tell if any of it landed in your kitchen.
It Started With One Cheese. Now It’s All of Them.
On June 3, 2026, Clover Hill Dairy of Mechanicsville, Maryland, put out a voluntary recall for its requesón, which is a soft, ricotta-style cheese. That seemed contained enough at first. Then, on June 18, the company expanded the whole thing to cover every cheese it manufactures at that facility.
That’s a huge jump. We’re not talking about one batch or one flavor anymore. We’re talking about the entire product line walking out the door, from the soft fresh cheeses all the way to the hard, aged stuff. When a dairy decides to recall literally everything it makes instead of just the item that tested positive, that tells you investigators are not confident the problem stops at a single product.
On top of that, the Maryland Department of Health suspended Clover Hill Dairy’s operating license. So the company isn’t just recalling cheese. It can’t legally keep making it right now either.
How Investigators Tracked It Down
The trail started in New York. On May 13, 2026, the Suffolk County Health Department flagged two related Listeria cases. The next day, state health officials confirmed both patients had eaten requesón cheese bought at a retailer in Brentwood. Investigators went to the store, pulled five cheese samples, and one of them came back positive for Listeria monocytogenes.
From there, they followed the supply chain backward. On May 27, an inspection at the store’s distributor pointed straight to Clover Hill Dairy as the maker of that requesón. Then came the part that really sealed it. A sample taken from an unopened 18-pound sealed bucket of requesón also tested positive. Genetic testing matched the bug in the cheese to the bug in the sick patients. That’s about as direct a line as you can draw.
By the latest count, six samples of requesón and one sample taken from inside the facility itself matched the outbreak strain. A contaminated environment inside the plant is a big deal, because it means the problem may not be coming from one bad ingredient. It may be living in the building.
The Full List of Recalled Cheeses
This is the part to pay attention to, because the list is long now. The recall covers requesón (soft ricotta) and cuajada, plus a whole spread of harder and flavored cheeses. According to the expanded list, that includes cheddar, white cheddar, white Colby, Monterey Jack, marble jack, and pepper jack.
It also covers flavored options like horseradish cheddar and Old Bay cheddar, plus versions with jalapeño and other add-ins. Basically, if it’s a Clover Hill Dairy cheese, it’s on the list.
The single most useful thing to look for is the plant or manufacturer permit number. Clover Hill Dairy cheese carries the code 24-128 stamped on the label. Some of it was sold in 10-, 12-, and 14-ounce clamshell containers. If you spot that permit number on anything in your fridge, that’s your answer. There was also a separate recall from Nelson & Isa Lacteos LLC of Bay Shore, New York, for 1-pound clamshell containers of requesón sold at New York retail locations from May 15 to May 28.
The Names on the Label Might Not Match
Here’s where it gets tricky, and honestly a little frustrating for shoppers. A lot of this cheese was sold in bulk and then repackaged before it ever reached a customer. That means the box in your fridge might not say Clover Hill Dairy at all.
The recalled cheese may have been relabeled under other brand names, including KESSO, QUESOS LA RICURA, IZALCO, DE MI PUEBLO, and RIO LINDO. And officials have been clear that this isn’t necessarily a complete list. Some stores repacked the cheese themselves, so the branding, labeling, and date codes can change depending on where you bought it.
That makes this recall a lot harder to navigate at home than a typical one where you can just match a brand and a barcode. If you bought fresh cheese loose, repackaged at the deli counter, or from a small market that scoops it out of a bulk container, you may have no brand name to check at all. When in doubt, the permit number 24-128 is your best clue, and if you can’t verify it, treat it as suspect.
Where This Cheese Showed Up
The cheese was sold from Clover Hill Dairy’s own retail market, at farmers markets, and through other distributors. Confirmed distribution covers six places: Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
But the CDC has said the cheese could have traveled beyond those states. When a product gets repackaged and resold a few times, it tends to drift past the original delivery map. So even if you’re not in one of the confirmed states, it’s worth a quick look if you buy fresh Latin-style cheeses from independent shops.
Confirmed illnesses so far have been reported in Illinois, Maryland, New York, and Virginia. That’s four states with sick people and six states with confirmed sales, which gives you a sense of how spread out this thing is.
An Outbreak That Quietly Ran for Years
This is the detail that makes the whole story stand out. This wasn’t a sudden burst of cases over a couple of weeks. The samples from sick people were collected over a stretch running from March 2023 all the way to June 2026. That’s roughly three years of scattered illnesses that nobody connected until recently.
The reason it stayed hidden so long comes down to how Listeria behaves. It can settle into the wet, cool corners of a processing plant, like floor drains, condensation lines, and equipment seams, and just live there. It can form a protective film on surfaces and survive for years if the cleaning routine slips. Product can test clean one day and contaminated the next, which makes the source brutally hard to pin down.
Modern genetic testing is what finally cracked it. Investigators used DNA fingerprinting to link cases that happened years apart and trace them to one common source. Without that technology, these illnesses probably would have kept looking like unrelated one-offs. As of the most recent update, 12 people have been infected, 10 have been hospitalized, and one person has died.
What to Do If You Bought Any
The advice from officials is simple and direct. Do not eat, sell, or serve the recalled cheese. Throw it out or take it back to the store where you bought it for a refund. If you’re not sure whether your cheese is part of the recall, the cautious move is to toss it rather than gamble.
There’s one extra step that people skip, and it matters here. Because Listeria can survive and even grow in the fridge, getting rid of the cheese isn’t the end of it. Officials recommend cleaning any shelves, drawers, containers, and surfaces that touched the cheese. Wash them with hot soapy water, then sanitize. Don’t forget the door gaskets and seals, since that’s exactly the kind of damp spot the bacteria likes.
If you’ve got questions about a specific product, the Southern Maryland Agricultural Development Commission set up a line at 240-528-8850, ext. 327, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Eastern.
The short version: this recall went from one soft cheese to a dairy’s entire catalog, the products may be hiding under five or more different brand names, and the cheese got repacked enough that it could be sitting in a fridge well outside the states officials originally listed. If you shop at farmers markets or smaller Latin grocers, take five minutes to read your labels and look for that 24-128 permit number. It’s a cheap insurance policy against a recall that keeps getting bigger.
