Here is today’s list of food safety recalls, product withdrawals, allergy alerts and miscellaneous compliance issues. The live links will take you directly to the official recall notices and company news releases that contain detailed information for each recall and alert.

If you would like to receive automatic email alerts for all new articles posted on eFoodAlert, please submit your request using the sidebar link.

United States

• Food Safety Recall:GoldCoast Salads (Naples, FL) recalls Blue Crab Spread (8-oz and 1-lb containers; Produced December 3, 2012; Exp 1-31-13), due to possible Listeria contamination. The recalled product was supplied to stores in the North East and South East USA, including: Giant, Giant Food Stores, Martin’s, Sam’s Club, ShopRite, andStop & Shop.
• Food Safety Recall:Trader Joe’s recalls Trader Joe’s Organic Pea Shoots (4 oz/113g; SKU 92756; Best by dates through 02/16), due to possible Listeria…

www.solidaritycenter.org

Global Unions Urge Release of Imprisoned Russian Trade Unionist

February 6, 2012—Trade unionist Valentin Urusov is proof that in Russia, it’s still possible to be imprisoned in the 21st century equivalent of the gulag for standing up for worker rights on the job. An electrical fitter at an ore-processing mill owned by the diamond mining company Alrosa, Urusov has spent more than four years of a six-year term in a penal colony in Yakutia in far northern Russia.

Described by friends as an intelligent and persuasive leader, Urusov in June 2008 formed the Profsvoboda trade union, affiliated with the Russian Metalworkers Trade Union. Profsvoboda sought to represent workers at the Udachny Pipe Diamond Mine, where workers toil in brutal cold in an open diamond pit just outside the Arctic circle.

Days after the union was founded, workers in one of the mine’s vehicle depots, dissatisfied with low pay and…