On Monday June 27, global chocolate manufacturer Barry Callebaut detected a salmonella positive production lot from a facility in Wieze, Belgium. The company’s food safety programs allowed it to quickly identify lecithin as the source of the contamination, an ingredient widely used in chocolate production.

After reaching out to all customers supplied with impacted chocolate products, Barry Callebaut confirms, based on its internal investigation, that no affected chocolate products by the salmonella-positive production lot in Wieze, Belgium, entered the retail food chain. The company informed the Belgian Food Safety Authorities (FAVV) about the incident, stopped all chocolate production lines as a precautionary measure and put a hold on all products manufactured since the time of testing.

The chocolate production in Wieze will remain suspended until further notice. Barry Callebaut says that it is pursuing its very thorough root cause analysis and keeping the FAVV informed in the process. When the analyses are completed, the lines will be cleaned and disinfected before the production process resumes.