Bothwell Cheese Inc. has shut down its production lines and honed in on a piece of equipment believed to be at the source of a possible Listeria contamination announced Sunday.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) put out a notice asking consumers to throw out products that are part of the recall or return them to where they were purchased.

A total of 262 cases containing five shredded cheese products made in Manitoba have been flagged in the recall. That amounts to more than 3,000 individual packages of cheese that could be impacted, said Mike Raftis, director of sales and marketing at Bothwell Cheese.

"It is an unfortunate circumstance, it is embarrassing," Raftis said. "We're very sorry that this issue has surfaced."

The recall affects shredded cheese products made on or before Dec. 19, 2015. It was for sale in Manitoba, Quebec and Saskatchewan, with the majority of the product being sold within Manitoba, Raftis said.

Raftis said the contamination results were produced during one of the company's in-house routine tests. They brought the information to the CFIA, which is now conducting its own review.

The company has identified a piece of equipment in its production line that may be responsible for the scare.

"This could be stemming from a piece of equipment that was newly commissioned and installed," he said. "If that equipment was the source of the contamination, that would transfer onto the product as well."

The equipment has been decommissioned and removed from the factory, Raftis said.

"This [shredded cheese] is the only product that ran on this particular line, so we're confident that it is isolated to this particular product," he said. "We are proactively taking some steps under our own direction to thoroughly clean and sanitize the plant. So our entire facility, for the next day or two, is being completely washed and sanitized from the top down."

Raftis expects the factory will resume production some time near the middle of the week. The company doesn't think the stoppage will impact the availability of its product in stores.

"We're very focused on producing quality products and we want to do everything possible to gain the trust back with our customers," he said.

This is the first time the New Bothwell, Man., based company has had a contamination scare, Raftis added.

List of items impacted by recall: