Democratic lawmakers are questioning whether a Boar’s Head deli meat plant at the center of last year’s deadly listeria outbreak will be fit to reopen.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, of Connecticut, sent a letter Monday asking company officials to appear before the Congressional Food Safety Caucus to discuss “a repeated pattern of food safety negligence that jeopardized Americans’ public health.”
The letter, signed by nine other Democrats, cited Associated Press reporting that described sanitation problems in recent months at Boar’s Head plants in three states. It requests a response by Sept. 26.
Boar’s Head officials have said they planned to reopen their plant in Jarratt, Virginia, in the coming months. The plant was shuttered after listeria-tainted liverwurst killed 10 people, sickened dozens and forced a recall of more than 7 million pounds of deli products. Federal officials said systemic problems at the plant caused the outbreak.
The listeria outbreak also exposed Boar’s Head as a deeply mismanaged company. When the CFO, who had been at the company for over 20 years, was deposed under oath, he couldn’t answer the question of who the CEO was, or who his boss was. It came up in a lawsuit between family members of the family that owns and controls the company, and has their own competing factions in charge of different parts of the company.
From a pure corporate governance perspective, that type of dysfunction is a recipe for disaster.