With all the E. coli outbreaks, Listeria has taken the back seat during 2007. The year’s recall list –a long one– maintained by the Food Safety & Inspection Service started with 290 pounds of listeria contaminated hog head cheese. That was on Jan. 3, 2007. The responsible party was Pap’s Louisiana Cuisine.

Two days later, Denver’s Gold Star Sausage Company recalled 15,514 pounds of sausage franks due to listeria. There would be seven more listeria recalls by year’s end, the largest being a 2.8 million pound recall of chicken breast strips by West Columbia, SC-based Carolina Culinard Foods.

Other listeria contaminated products included ready-to-eat turkey, semi boneless ham steaks, frozen sausage rolls, and a chicken and pastry product. All totaled, listeria-laced recalled products came to just a tad under 3 million pounds.

The only listeria recall remaining "active" at year end was Meridian, TX-based Double B Foods Inc., which sought return of 98,000 pounds of its frozen sausage rolls on Nov. 15.

So, it was not a big year for listeria recalls, but neither was it an insignificant one. Especially if you were a pregnant North Carolina woman hopeing for a baby instead of a still-born.