If you grabbed a big bag of jalapeños on your last Costco run, do yourself a favor and go check the fridge before you chop up another batch of salsa. Shoppers in Texas got some annoying news this month, and it involves a five-pound bag of peppers that ended up at the center of a Salmonella recall.
The pull came from Dairyland Produce LLC, which does business as Hardie’s Fresh Foods out of Houston and Dallas. The company announced it on August 12, 2026, after the peppers it repacked were flagged for possible contamination. Production and distribution have already stopped. It is a targeted recall, not a nationwide panic, but if you shop the wrong two stores, it matters a lot.
The Exact Bags Being Pulled
The product is labeled PEPPER JALAPENO 5#, which is just the warehouse way of saying a five-pound bag of jalapeños. You are looking for clear plastic bags with pink stick-on labels. That pink label is your quickest tell.
Only two Costco locations got the affected batches. One is Store #1487 at 12717 Network Drive in Stafford, Texas. The other is Store #0655 at 8282 Park Lane in Dallas. If you shop somewhere else, this specific bag probably never touched your cart.
Seven lot codes are involved: X2741775, X2741859, X2744163, X2744706, X2746349, X2746490, and X2748743. The tied production dates are 26192 (07/11/26), 26196 (07/15/26), 26197 (07/16/26), 26199 (07/18/26), and 26203 (07/22/26). Grab the bag, flip it over, and compare the printing. It takes about ten seconds.
Florida Had Its Own Round
The Texas stores were not the first Costco spot to get tangled up in this. Back on August 6, a separate jalapeño recall hit the Orlando region, specifically the Costco Business Center there. Those peppers came from Todd’s Quality Tomatoes, Inc. in Sanford, Florida, and were listed under item number 514606.
Those five-pound bags sold between July 23 and August 5, 2026. A Business Center is not your regular Costco warehouse. It mostly serves restaurants, caterers, and food operators buying in bulk, so the buyers here were likely local kitchens more than families doing a weekly shop. Still worth flagging if you run a small food spot around Orlando.
Why Jalapeños Keep Getting Named
Two Costco recalls of the same vegetable in the same month is not a coincidence. Both connect to a bigger outbreak of Salmonella Javiana that investigators traced to one grower in Sinaloa, Mexico. Those peppers moved through a company called Coast Citrus Distributors and spread out to wholesalers and restaurants all over the country.
The scale is what makes it stick. As of August 14, 2026, the case count sat at 345 illnesses across 27 states, with 36 hospitalizations and no deaths. The sicknesses started on dates ranging from June 19 to July 20. When health workers interviewed people who got sick, 93 percent said they had eaten at a quick-service Mexican-style restaurant beforehand. That single detail is what pointed everyone at the peppers.
One farm in Mexico set off a chain reaction that reached dozens of products and multiple stores. The Costco bags are just one visible piece of a much wider cleanup.
The Restaurants and Brands Caught Up In It
Chances are you have heard some of these names. Chipotle switched its jalapeño supplier on July 20, 2026, and Qdoba stopped using jalapeños entirely on July 28. Both chains yanked the affected peppers early, and regulators have since said they do not see a current ongoing risk to customers from those restaurants.
On the grocery side, Taylor Farms recalled a long list of items made with the peppers, including salsa, guacamole, dips, burritos, and sandwiches, with “Best if Used By” dates up to August 16. Those went to 26 states and stores like Target, Kroger, Trader Joe’s, Walmart, and Albertsons. Whole Foods pulled products with jalapeños on August 12. NatureBest and H-E-B recalled pico de gallo, stuffed mushrooms, soup mix, and diced jalapeños sold in Texas and Louisiana. If your kitchen leans heavy on Mexican staples, that is a wide net.
How To Check What’s In Your Fridge
Start with the Costco bag itself. If you have a clear five-pound bag with a pink label from the Stafford or Dallas store, match the lot code and production date against the list above. If it lines up, do not eat it. Costco is famous for taking almost anything back, so bring it in with your receipt or your membership and get your money back.
Do not forget the freezer, either. If you portioned out those jalapeños and froze some for later, toss those too. And clean up after them. The advice from officials is to wash and sanitize any container, counter, or cutting board the peppers may have touched, since cross-contamination is how one bad ingredient becomes three ruined dishes.
One practical note on timing. If you already ate something and want to keep an eye out, symptoms tied to this kind of infection usually turn up anywhere from six hours to six days after eating, and most people bounce back on their own in about a week. Young kids, older adults, and anyone with a weaker immune system tend to have a rougher time of it.
The Tricky Part About Loose Peppers
The Costco bags are actually the easy case. They come with a brand, a bag, and a printed lot code, so you can confirm whether yours is affected. The messier situation is loose jalapeños scooped from an open bin at any store. There is no brand name and nothing printed on a single pepper, which makes it nearly impossible to know where it came from.
Food safety attorneys who track these cases point out the simplest move here. If you have fresh jalapeños from that Sinaloa supply through Coast Citrus, or you honestly are not sure who grew your peppers, the advice is to just toss them and clean whatever they touched. Only jalapeños from that one specific supply chain have been named. No other kind of pepper is part of this, so your bell peppers and serranos are not the issue.
What’s Actually Worth Doing
Don’t overthink this one. If you shopped the Stafford or Dallas Costco and bought a big bag of jalapeños this summer, go read the label right now and match the code. If you buy in bulk near Orlando, check the item number on your Todd’s Quality Tomatoes bag. Everyone else is almost certainly fine, since this recall is aimed at very specific batches, not the whole produce section.
Beyond the peppers themselves, take a quick scan of your fridge for the prepared stuff. Store-brand salsa, guacamole, pico, and pre-made burritos all made the wider recall list, so glance at the “Best if Used By” dates while you are in there. Anything dated on or before August 16 that contains jalapeños deserves a second look.
The whole thing is a good reminder of how one grower thousands of miles away can reach your kitchen counter. But the fix on your end is boring and easy: check the bag, return what matches, wipe down the counter, and get back to your chips and salsa. Two minutes of reading a label beats throwing out an entire weekend’s worth of cooking.
