Boar's Head to shutter Jarratt plant, displacing 500 workers (2024)

“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, which has not been operational since late July 2024,” Boar’s Head said. “But, under these circumstances, we feel that a plant closure is the most prudent course.”

The shutdown affects about 500 union workers represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 union, said Jonathan Williams, the union’s communications director. They are being offered transfers to other Boar’s Head facilities or severance packages the union negotiated with the company. Williams said additional maintenance and sanitation workers represented by the union will stay on as the plant shuts down and will have the same options when that work is completed.

The company suspended operations after Maryland officials found listeria in Boar’s Head liverwurst purchased at a Baltimore supermarket. That prompted Boar’s Head to recall the liverwurst and nine other products made on the same line. Boar’s Head expanded the recall to all of its Jarratt products on July 29.

Health officials say consumers and retailers should throw out any of the recalled items purchased before July 31.

Boar’s Head said its investigation found the root cause of the contamination was a specific production process that existed only at the Jarratt facility and was used only for liverwurst.

“With this discovery, we have decided to permanently discontinue liverwurst,” the company said.

“In response to the inspection records and noncompliance reports at the Jarratt plant, we will not make excuses,” the company said.

State inspections found multiple violations

Two of the violations, on two successive days, involved the same problem of too much moisture in the area of the cook tank at the plant in Greensville County, about an hour south of Richmond. These occurred two and three days before Maryland health officials found listeria in Boar’s Head liverwurst, and a week after the death of a Newport News man and hospitalizations of other elderly people sparked investigations into the listeria outbreak.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said its order to suspend operations was “based on the determination that your establishment failed to maintain sanitary conditions ... and based on the determination that your establishment produced and shipped adulterated product.”

Boar’s Head said it is working to assist workers who will lose their jobs with the plant’s closing.

“It pains us to impact the livelihoods of hundreds of hard-working employees. We do not take lightly our responsibility as one of the area’s largest employers,” the company said.

“We appreciate the extraordinary efforts Boar’s Head has made to keep our members on the job as long as possible and to ensure everyone is taken care of during this process,” said the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 union in a statement

“Everyone agrees this unprecedented tragedy was not the fault of the workforce, so it is especially unfortunate that the Jarratt plant must close indefinitely and put so many men and women out of work,” the union added.

Among the other 69 violations beyond the liverwurst cook tank issues that state inspectors found in the 2,127 specific checks they made at the plant since Aug. 1, 2023, were 13 instances when checks to see that the vats, knives or other processing equipment had been cleaned before the start of a work shift found dried meat and other food residue, a Times-Dispatch review found.

The state inspectors operate under a cooperative regulatory agreement, the Talmadge-Aiken program, under which the USDA oversees and audits their work and has the authority to use what it finds to suspend operations of a plant.

1,600 get listeria infections in typical year

Listeria infections are caused by a type of bacteria that can survive during refrigeration. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 1,600 people get listeria food poisoning each year and about 260 die.

Boar’s Head said that to prevent future incidents, it is implementing enhanced food safety measures, including appointing a new chief food safety and quality assurance officer to report directly to the company president and establishing a company food safety council made up of independent food safety experts.

The company said the council will help it adopt and implement enhanced quality assurance programs.

Its members will include Frank Yiannas, former deputy commissioner for food policy and response at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; Martin Wiedmann, a veterinarian and food scientist who is Cornell University’s Gellert Family Professor in Food Safety and the co-director of the New York State Integrated Food Safety Center of Excellence; Mindy Brashears, former USDA under secretary for food safety; and Dr. David Acheson, former associate commissioner for foods at the FDA.

Boar’s Head said its products currently in stores and restaurants are not part of the recall. The company said people who bought recalled products made before July 31 should throw them out or return them to the store where they purchased them for a full refund.

The family of the Newport News man who died of a listeria infection after eating the tainted liverwurst from Jarratt has sued and there may be other lawsuits coming, said Carl Tobias, professor of law at the University of Richmond.

The violating that Virginia inspectors reported to the U.S. Department of Agriculture would help make a case, Tobias said.

“But it might be difficult to trace the injury back to a specific product and listeria can take a long time to manifest and show the cause-effect linkage between consumption and harm,” he added.