According to the Journal, a government report reviewed by that news organization showed that the company had evidence of potentially unsafe bacteria in its OH salad plant more than a year before the company withdrew its packaged salads from grocery stores.
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On Jan. 26, Dole told inspectors the company was aware that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) had found Listeria monocytogenes in four salad product samples collected by the agency earlier that month, according to the report.
The report also states that the plant’s third-party laboratory notified Dole about positive Listeria test results on January 5 and 7, but it did not say whether testing was done to determine whether it was a threat, according to Reuters. In the United States and Canada, 33 people fell ill from May 2015 to February 2016 getting hospitalized while four of them died, NBC News reported.
FDA documents obtained by Food Safety News through a Freedom of Information Act request showed Dole officials knew of Listeria in the facility since at least July 2014.
The FDA reports “deal with issues at our plant that we have corrected”, William Goldfield, a spokesman for Dole, told the Journal.
The company said last week that it had restarted limited production in its Springfield plant, and would expand in coming weeks.
“We understand that these recent news reports may raise questions among our consumers and customers”. It also issued recalls on all salad products packaged at the facility. “They should be assured, however, that we have worked in conjunction with the FDA to address those observations and ensure that Dole products are safe”, Dole said in the statement today.
In the U.S., 19 people were sickened in nine states, and one person from MI died as a result of listeria, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Among pregnant women, Listeria can cause miscarriage, stillbirth, premature delivery and illness in newborns.
A report published in the Food Safety News said, “Four people died from these contaminated salads, and dozens more were sickened and hospitalized, because executives at Dole put the company’s profits over public health”.
According to a report in NY Times by STEPHANIE STROM, “They’d been having positive tests for listeria for some time”, said Bill Marler, a prominent food safety lawyer who represents one of the victims in a lawsuit against Dole.
“The Food and Drug Administration should stop letting companies write their own recall notices and instead implement the recall notification system called for in FSMA”.
Federal investigators said Dole didn’t test surfaces at the Springfield plant that came into contact with food.
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The samples found by FDA and CFIA were genetic matches to those taken from multiple individuals who fell ill during the outbreak.
