Food safety experts slammed government health inspectors for letting a “listeria factory” fester despite dozens of disturbing violations before the deadly outbreak was linked to tainted Boar’s Head deli meats.
The company’s plant in Jarratt, Va., was found to have bugs, pools of blood on the floor and growing mold over the past year, according to records released by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.
“These inspection reports show that this was a listeria factory as much as it was a meat factory,” food safety attorney Bill Marler told The Post.
“The government needs to answer the question of what were you doing? Didn’t this generate enough questions given the size of this plant.”
At least nine people have died, including one in New York, and 57 have been hospitalized since officials identified the Jarratt facility as the source of the listeria outbreak, according to the CDC.
New York has seen the most cases with 17 residents getting sick from the contaminated deli meats. Two people died in South Carolina and there has been one death each in New Jersey, Virginia, Illinois, Florida, Tennessee and New Mexico.
In all, health inspectors found 69 instances of “non-compliance“ at the Jarratt plant.
One inspector noted “a rancid smell” in the raw receiving cooler with “ample amounts of blood in puddles on the floor” during a Feb. 21 visit.
A “black mold-like substance” was seen throughout another holding cooler on Jan. 9 and again on the outside of four steel vats along with one to two inches of meat on June 1.
Inspectors noted seeing mold in different places during six visits in total.
On June 10, an inspector spotted “approximately 15-20 flies … going in and out of 4 vats of pickle left in the room.”
Another red flag about the impending danger should have been condensation and clogged drains, which created constant moisture and an environment in which listeria thrives, said Lee-Ann Jaykus, a professor of food, bioprocessing, and nutrition sciences at North Carolina State University, who read the reports released Thursday.
“Had I been an inspector in a plant like that I would have said ‘you guys need to be swabbing like crazy for listeria’ because many of the non-compliances are risk factors for having a listeria problem,” Jaykus told The Post.
Boar’s Head recalled seven million pounds of ready-to-eat deli meats and poultry products last month, on top of a smaller recall earlier in July when the outbreak was first detected.
The 119-year-old family-run business – which has since shuttered the Jarratt plant – is responsible for testing its facilities for listeria, but the results of those tests were not posted on the USDA’s website, officials said.
The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, which is responsible for regulating meat plants, appeared to have passed the buck on who was to blame for allowing the plant to remain open.
The agency issued a statement Thursday explaining that the inspectors were in fact employees of the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS), which had a contract with the USDA and was authorized to monitor the plant according to federal standards.
The plant “remains closed until the establishment is able to demonstrate it can produce safe product,” an FSIS spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the agency is “working closely with VDACS to ensure the establishment has an effective system in place to produce safe food for the public.”
The excuse didn’t hold much water with one food safety expert.
“FSIS is scrambling right now and trying to figure out how to save face and one way, of course, is to say that it was Virginia’s responsibility. But ultimately the buck falls on the federal agency,” the source said, requesting to remain anonymous.
The Virginia agency, for its part, told The Post that its employees “conduct inspections every operating day” at the Jarratt plant adding that the plant is required to take “corrective actions” for each of the “non-compliances.”
VDACS said over the past year it took 12 samples from the plant to a USDA lab for testing and that they all came back negative for listeria.
Despite these efforts and the copious notes the inspectors took, it was the Maryland Department of Health that rang alarm bells in July, when it tested a sample of liverwurst for listeria that led to the two recalls of Boar’s Head products.
The outbreak is now the largest listeriosis incident since the 2011 cantaloupe-associated outbreak.
Some of the victims are preparing lawsuits, including the family of a Virginia resident, Gunter Morgenstein, 88, a Holocaust survivor who passed away on July 18 after eating liverwurst he purchased on June 30 from a Harris Teeter supermarket.
The family’s attorney, Tony Coveny, said he is preparing a lawsuit against Boar’s Head and will be filing it this week.
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“My family is devastated,” Morgenstein’s son Garshon said in a statement, adding “We hope that through the legal process we can make Boar’s Head and other lunch meat products safer for future consumers.”
Boar’s Head said in a statement “We deeply regret the impact this recall has had on affected families. No words can fully express our sympathies and the sincere and deep hurt we feel for those who have suffered losses or endured illness.”
Other victims, including the family of an Illinois resident who also died after contracting listeria and a 74 year-old Viriginia woman who was in a coma for several days, have reached out to Marler to file lawsuits against the century old family run busines.
“We are seeing a fraction of people who have gotten sick,” Marler said. “A lot of people who get listeria have symptoms like diarrhea and fever,” but they may not be hospitalized and therefore are not tested for listeria.
