Boar's Head has deployed dozens of workers to deep clean a Virginia plant where a listeria outbreak killed several customers, but the company has no plans to reopen the facility, according to information obtained by The Post.
The cold-cut food giant said last week it was “indefinitely” closing its Jarratt, Virginia, plant and offering severance to 500 employees. In an email to The Washington Post this week, a Boar's Head spokesman said “there are currently no plans to reopen the plant.”
Jonathan Williams, a spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 union, said Boar's Head plans to employ about 85 maintenance and sanitation workers at the 170,000-square-foot facility for a few more months.
The Jarratt plant stopped packing meats and cheeses in late July after a listeria outbreak that has killed nine people and hospitalized at least 57, but Williams said most employees continued cleaning the plant until Sept. 13.
Williams said a skeleton crew of 85 workers will remain at the plant through at least the end of the year, but others will be offered jobs and commuter benefits at the plant's Boar's Head facility in Petersburg, Virginia, 30 minutes away.
In addition, some were paid to take courses on food safety and manufacturing to gain professional qualifications.
Food safety lawyer Bill Marler, who represents victims of the Boar's Head listeria outbreak, said he doubts the Jarratt plant will reopen.
“Once listeria enters a facility it is very difficult to eradicate, and the inspection reports we have seen indicate that conditions at this plant are the perfect place for listeria to grow,” Mahler told the Post.
As for Boar's Head, “given the nine-plus deaths, I seriously doubt they're cleaning it up to reopen,” Mahler added.
One reason is that listeria is difficult to eliminate once it takes hold, food safety experts told The Washington Post.
“The pathogen lives in buildings and in hard-to-access places like drains, cracks and walls,” says Lee Ann Jacus, professor of food, bioprocessing and nutritional sciences at North Carolina State University. “Once Listeria has established itself in a plant, it becomes very difficult to control.”
The plant was built in 1990, according to public records, and its old equipment and buildings are particularly vulnerable compared to newer facilities that are built to be disassembled and sanitized.
“Boar's Head is reviewing its equipment and potentially moving certain pieces of equipment to other facilities for maintenance so they can be used again if they continue to be used,” he said. [the plant] “Factories are closing,” Hal King, managing partner at Active Food Safety, told The Post. “Most will reopen with modified production and products or could be used as warehouses.”
Inspection reports from the past year by state and Department of Agriculture officials found 69 instances of unsanitary conditions, including mold, flying insects, condensation, clogged drains, “foul odors” and rusty equipment.
In July, Boar's Head recalled 7 million units of meat and cheese made at the facility after samples of liverwurst tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes.
“Following an investigation, it was determined that the root cause of the contamination was solely at the Jarratt plant and was due to a specific manufacturing process that was only used for liverwurst,” the company said in a statement. “As a result of this discovery, we have decided to permanently cease manufacturing liverwurst.”
The Washington Post reported that the impact of the factory's closure has already had a significant impact on the local community, with former employees worried about how they will be able to pay rent given the lack of job opportunities in the area.
Francisco Diez Gonzalez, a professor who studies food safety issues at the University of Georgia, said Boar's Head's Jarratt plant could be the first to be shut down immediately and permanently following a listeria outbreak.
“In other infections, specific root causes were identified and resolved, allowing production to resume,” Díez González told the Post, “but the inspection reports show that the problem is so widespread that it seems nearly impossible to ensure the production of a safe product.”
In 2015, a Listeria outbreak at a Blue Bell dairy plant in Texas killed three people. The company recalled all of its products and temporarily closed production facilities in Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama after the Food and Drug Administration allegedly tried to hide the outbreak from the public.
Blue Bell was ultimately ordered to pay $19.35 million in criminal penalties, and its former president, Paul Crews, was ordered to pay a $100,000 fine for his role in the spread of the infection.
