Boar's head is planning to reopen the facility of Jarratt, Virginia in the middle of a deadly Listeria Last year, despite federal inspections that still continue to find violations of sanitary facilities at three of the other facilities of the food company, according to the federal data obtained by the Associated Press.
The AP obtained 35 pages with inspection reports via a Freedom or Information ACT request. Between January 1 and July 23, these reports will deal with inspections in three other Boar's Head Facilities: Forrest City, Arkansas; New Castle, Indiana; and Petersburg, Virginia. In general, the reports reveal a series of offenses, including fungus, condensation that dripping over food areas, flooding waste, meat and fat residues on walls and equipment, removal blocked with meat residues and the pool of meat juice. The reports also registered staff who did not wear the correct protective hair trays and aprons – and did not wash their hands.
In one violation, reported in the Petersburg facility, inspectors found that meat inspectors are being collected under equipment, including “5-6 hams, 4 large pieces of meat and a large amount of pooling meat juice.”
The problems reflect the sanitary violations recorded in the Jarratt factory before infection with Listeria– in particular linked to the liverwurst of the company – has brought an outbreak that civil servants led to close it. From July to November last year, this outbreak included 61 people in 19 states, in hospital and killing 10. Inspection reports revealed problems with fungus, water leaks, dirty equipment and rooms, meat waste on walls and equipment, different insects, and at a certain moment, puddles of blood on the floor.
In the midst of the outbreak response, Boar's head promised to make major changes to improve its food safety systems. These include setting up a panel of food safety advisers, including Frank Yiannas, a former Food and Drug Administration officer, and Mindy Brashears, who served as Trump's US Department of Agriculture Underersecretary for Food Safety in his first term and is nominated for the position in his second.
