Eastern WA company admits selling juice from moldy, putrid concentrate for school lunches

KENNEWICK – A closed Sunnyside, Washington, company that sold juice for school lunch programs and its owner have pleaded guilty to charges stemming from inspections that found filthy, putrid and decomposing juice products, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Eastern Washington.

Food and Drug Administration inspections of facilities owned by Valley Processing in 2018 found visible mold, animal urine and feces, and decomposing corpses of birds, rodents and insects in juice products, according to court documents.

One inspector reported seeing and photographed a concrete tank of juice concentrate with a layer of mold and crust so thick and hard that a rat was walking on top of it, according to court documents.

Mary Ann Bliesner, the primary owner and president of the company, pleaded guilty this week to misdemeanor charges of introducing adulterated food into interstate commerce and failure to register a food facility.

Valley Processing also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to introduce adulterated and misbranded food into interstate commerce.

It acknowledged that between October 2012 and June 2019 it had conspired to distribute tainted and potentially unsafe apple and grape juice to customers in the United States, which included school lunch programs, and to customers abroad.

“In this case, the company’s actions put at risk the health of consumers, including schoolchildren, who consumed the fruit juice,” Special Agent in Charge Robert Iwanicki of the FDA Office of Criminal Investigations Los Angeles Field Office said.

Valley Processing sentencing

The Eastern Washington District U.S. Attorney’s Office and defense attorneys have agreed to recommend that U.S. Judge Stanley Bastian sentence Bliesner, 83, to three years probation and require her and her company to forfeit about $742,000 to the federal government, the estimated proceeds from selling potentially tainted juice and juice concentrate.

Sentencing is set for March 26

The company admitted in a plea agreement this week that it blended grape juice concentrate, which had been stored outside for years and exposed to the elements, with newer grape juice concentrate and sold the resulting blended grape juice to unsuspecting customers as new grape juice with a new lot number and production date.

In November 2020, the United States filed a civil complaint in federal court to end the production and sale of Valley Processing products.

Two months later Valley Processing and Bliesner agreed to stop all operations and sales without FDA approval and the company then shut down.

The criminal case was filed in 2022.

FDA tipped to unregistered facilities

Problems came to light with Valley Processing after the FDA was tipped off in 2018 that the plant had storage facilities that it had not registered with the FDA to prevent the FDA from inspecting them, according to court documents.

In 2016, Bliesner told inspectors that the plant consisted of three main processing plants at 108 Blaine Ave. and nearby frozen storage facilities.

She concealed from inspectors that two buildings elsewhere were used to store food product, including a facility on Grape Road with hundreds of thousands of gallons of grape juice concentrate, according to a court document.

In 2018, she told inspectors who had been alerted to additional food storage sites that the Grape Road facility was “off-limits” and that it had been unsafe to enter for three years, according to court documents.

She told staff to place caution tape at the entrance and stairs leading to tanks holding grape concentrate, according to the indictment in the case.

Tests of samples of the concentrate stored at the facility found it was contaminated with bird and rodent feces, fur, insects, decaying remains of animals, mold, yeast and other contaminants, according to a court document.

The facility was used to store product from past grape harvests, some years ago, according to court documents.

It had some grape juice stored in a cold room and in refrigerated storage tanks, but also had three 26,000-gallon capacity tanks that were open to the elements were insufficiently cooled by an air condenser that blew cool air across their tops, according to a court document.

At times they were partially covered by a plastic liner.

Just two months before inspectors saw the live rat in one tank, the plant had transferred 105,000 gallons of grape juice concentrate into 55 gallon drums to prepare grape juice concentrate for shipment and sale, according to a court document.

Because the juice did not meet customer specifications, however, this grape juice concentrate was never sold nor shipped, according to the plea agreement.

Moldy, rotten grape product

Inspectors also learned of and inspected the plant’s Blaine Avenue facility, finding drums in May 2018 that had juice concentrate and juice stored outside at ambient temperature. Some had been rotting and fermenting for years, according to the indictment.

Some of it was produced as early as 2011, but was still being used to fill customer orders, some as-is and some blended with newer product, but not necessarily repasteurized, according to a court document.

Inspectors also found solid sediments that had settled to the bottom of drums of grace juice concentrate, filling a quarter of the drums with what were called “bottoms.”

During seasonally slow times at Valley Processing, water would be added to the bottoms and the mixture would be reprocessed, according to a court document.

The intent was to conceal the old, rotten and moldy grape bottoms and sell the resulting juice concentrate as recently produced product, according to a court document.

“Bliesner and her company, Valley Processing, produced juice in filthy and unsafe conditions, mislabeled that product, and then sold it to the National School Lunch Program that serves low-income school children,” U.S. Attorney Vanessa Waldref for the Eastern District of Washington said.

“School children deserve safe and nutritious food. Nothing is more important that the health and safety of our children,” she said.

Company allegedly skipped testing

Bliesner and Valley Processing also were accused of falsifying information about tests for dangerous contaminants or not doing tests.

From summer 2017 to summer 2018 the plant shipped 19 lots of apple juice concentrate that had been blended or reworked from 2016 product.

The concentrate was not checked for arsenic, a potential problem for apple juice products, until late summer 2018, according to the indictment.

The results showed arsenic at more than double the FDA limit of 10 parts per billion, according to a court document.

From 2014 to March 2017, employees of the plant were told to falsify information about patulin, a mold toxin that can be found at high levels on rotten, bruised or improperly stored apples, according to a court document. Defendants were told to list patulin testing on apple juice products as pending, when no testing was done or test results showed levels that exceeded FDA limits, according to a document.