Boar’s Head shuts down Virginia plant tied to listeria deaths

Boar’s Head announced Friday that it would indefinitely shut down the troubled Virginia deli meat plant that has been tied to a deadly listeria outbreak.

The company also said it had identified liverwurst processing as the source of contamination and would permanently discontinue the product.

Federal inspectors had repeatedly found health and sanitation violations at the plant in Jarratt, Virginia, with an extensive review two years ago by inspectors who said it posed an “imminent threat” to food safety. That finding could have resulted in a warning letter or even a suspension of production there, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture did not take strict measures and allowed the plant to stay open.

In July, Boar’s Head began recalling its lunch meats after health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began to trace hospitalizations that now number 57, as well as nine deaths of people 70 and older, back to the meats produced at the site. It paused production at the plant in late July.

“Given the seriousness of the outbreak, and the fact that it originated at Jarratt, we have made the difficult decision to indefinitely close this location,” the company said in a statement posted Friday.

Jonathan Williams, communications director for the union that represents about 500 workers at the plant, said the company was providing severance packages and relocation to the employees. Williams, of the United Food & Commercial Workers Local 400 union, said the company gave employees the option to continue to work at the other Virginia processing center that the company operates or to transfer to others.

Boar’s Head runs facilities in Michigan, Indiana, New York and Arkansas.

New Agriculture Department records released by the company Friday show that inspectors deemed the company’s methods to control listeria inadequate after taking swabs of various pieces of equipment July 24.

The inspectors concluded that “product may have been prepared, packed, or held under insanitary conditions, whereby product may have become contaminated with filth,” in a notice delivered to the company July 31.

The company said it would appoint a new safety council of veteran food safety experts and hire a new chief food safety and quality assurance officer who will report directly to the company president.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.