Castleberry’s Food Company has recalled hundreds of thousands of pounds of canned chili sauce and other products, due to a possible botulism contamination the FDA warned consumers about Wednesday.

The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning Wednesday, alerting consumers that certain brands of canned hot dog chili sauce may be contaminated with a potentially fatal botulism toxin.

The brands named by the FDA are Castleberry's, Austex and Kroger. 10-ounce cans that expire from April 30, 2009, through May 22, 2009 should be avoided, the FDA said.

Castleberry’s Food Company issued a voluntary recall Thursday of canned meat products that could be contaminated as well. The Augusta, Georgia-based company recalled approximately 721,389 pounds of canned meat products, according to Reuters.

The announcement came from the US Agriculture Department’s Food Safety Inspection Service. A spokesperson with the department said that the measure was a preventive one, as the canned meat products had been processed on the same equipment as the chili sauce ones, at about the same time.

“We have no evidence that there was illness associated with any of the products that are in this recall,” USDA's FSIS Steven Cohen said. “But because they might have been processed using the same equipment then it was a prudent step to go ahead and recall those,” he added.

Four people have been hospitalized in the past several weeks, two teenage siblings from Texas and an adult couple from Indiana. They were seriously ill but would survive, according to media reports.

The disease is extremely rare, extremely dangerous and caused by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. Amongst symptoms of contamination are dry mouth, slurred speech, difficulty swallowing, vomiting, double and/or blurred vision, muscle weakness and sometimes diarrhea.

Respiratory failure and paralysis can be fatal to a person, unless supported by a ventilator. Health officials said the bacterium is so powerful that merely opening a contaminated can and inhaling, swallowing or touching the product can lead to illness.

In a somewhat ironic twist, botulinum toxin, produced by Clostridium botulinum, is used as a cosmetic product to prevent the contraction of facial muscles and thus the emergence of wrinkles.