There is a company based in Virginia that makes high-end deli meats and cheeses. I didn’t know much about them, but I heard some gross, revolting stories that made me look. Rubbernecking the accident and all that, you know. Their main page is a bit daunting right now. They have recalled a lot of their products, saying they’re potentially contaminated with Listeria.
What they don’t mention is that 57 people so far have been hospitalized thanks to their food, or that there are 69 records of “noncompliances” flagged by the USDA in the past year. But don’t worry, the company says food safety is their “highest priority.”
Do you want to read about Boar’s Head’s offenses? No, you do not, so I’ll put them below the fold. Don’t read unless you have a strong stomach.
Beyond issues like paperwork lapses and leftover meat on equipment, the records show inspectors faulted Boar’s Head several times for mold or mildew building up around the company’s facilities in Jarratt.
In July, federal inspectors found what looked to be mold and mildew around the hand washing sinks for the workers tasked with meats that are supposed to be ready to eat.
Mold was also found building up outside of steel vats used by the plant, previous records show, as well as in holding coolers between the site’s smokehouses.
“A black mold like substance was seen throughout the room at the wall/concrete junction. As well as some caulking around brick/metal,” they wrote in January, saying some spots were “as large as a quarter.”
Other locations were found to have a number of issues with leaking or pooling water, including a puddle found to have “a green algal growth” inside and condensation that was found to be “dripping over product being held.”
After inspectors flagged one of the leaks to the company, workers tried to mop up the leaks.
“The employee wiped a third time, and the leaks returned within 10 seconds,” inspectors wrote after one condensation issue was raised on July 27, near fans that looked to be blowing the liquid onto uncovered deli meats.
Beyond water, USDA faulted the company for leaks of other substances. In February, an inspector found “ample amounts of blood in puddles on the floor” and a “rancid smell” throughout a cooler used at the plant.
A number of records also flag sightings of insects in and around deli meats at the plant, including one instance that prompted the agency to tag more than 980 pounds of ham in a smokehouse hallway to be “retained” for an investigation.
In June, another record flagged concerns over flies going in and out of “vats of pickle” left by Boar’s Head in a room.
“Small flying gnat like insects were observed crawling on the walls and flying around the room. The rooms walls had heavy meat buildup,” they wrote.
Other parts of the facility were also found to have bugs, including what looked to be “ants traveling down the wall,” as well as a beetle and a cockroach.
Insects are good protein, you know. I am intrigued by the room where the walls had “heavy meat buildup,” though. Show me a picture so that can be more accurately featured in my nightmares from now on!
It seems to me that more inspectors and enforcement of standards would be a great idea, except…
It’s unclear whether Boar’s Head will face any penalties by the USDA for the repeat issues. Reports published by the agency so far show no “enforcement actions” taken against the company in the past year. A USDA spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
If the Republicans return to power, they’ll get rid of these pesky regulations and all those problems will disappear. Nothing to worry about for the owners of that business.
@1 beleroy – Or the Supreme Court could rule the USDA doesn’t have authority enforce those regulations.
It is the Boeing situation all over again. Everything is at risk in order to get higher pay to executives and higher returns to investors. Safety and compliance are not profit centers, so they are the first depts to be cut in the pursuit of profit.
That reminds me of a famous book of the early last century.
The meat slaughter and packing industry in Chicago was very large and important.
At the start of the 20th century, the employees were mostly immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. They were treated badly by the corporations. The sanitary and health conditions were to put it simply, not very good.
Sound familiar?
The meat processing industry today is mostly staffed by Third World immigrants, both legal and illegal.
I would hope that hygiene conditions today are better than the place described above, Boar’s Head.
They’ll get a hefty fine of $50 and that will teach them. 😑
I spent some time working in a slaughterhouse (a slaughterhouse that passed all of their inspections) – that experience was enough to push me most of the way over to the ‘I’d rather not eat meat’ side of the table.
3 people have died so far this summer in Canada due to listeria contamination in a plant that makes plant based milk products. Bad compliance with food safety requirements is bad no matter what the product.
Don’t think vegetarianism will save you from food borne illness.
Last major Listeria outbreak was driven by cantaloupe, so nope.
My usual supermarket carries Boar’s Head products in the deli and as pre-packaged sliced meats. I’ve bought their products occasionally and thought them to be decent, if overpriced. I won’t be a customer any more.
Just taking early easy steps to solving the population problems of the future.
That used to be my father’s job to inspect places like that, as the head of USDA Meat Grading. Seems like things have gone way downhill since he retired.
@10: Two thoughts —
That “usual supermarket” wouldn’t happen to be owned by Kroger, would it? You know, the oligopolist trying to buy another oligopolist to become a bigger oligopolist and “better compete” with other oligopolists? Whose own senior executive monitoring retail pricing just admitted, in sworn testimony before a Congressional committee, that price increases in the dairy sector (including cheeses) have been “significantly greater” than the rate of inflation?
I’ve always found the quality of BH products to be little, if any, better than exact equivalents of a anything a step above the K word. The distinction has been that BH has, for longer, offered certain varieties that are difficult to obtain in the “regular sliced cheese-like-product section” — and once one compares a BH product of that variety to a real deli, the BH reputation for quality takes a hit. (And, although it’s certainly not our host’s interest, the “deli meats” are even less of a “better quality” thing, especially given the generally higher sodium levels compared to those from a generally-comparably-price true wurstmeister.)
CDC ends its probe of cucumber Salmonella outbreak after 551 cases
Apple juice sold at Walmart in 25 states recalled due to elevated arsenic levels
Kimchi recalled over high levels of yeast
Guacamole Recall Update As FDA Sets Highest Risk Warning
There have been 9 deaths so far.
https://www.mlive.com/news/2024/08/9-deaths-now-linked-to-boars-head-deli-meat-listeria-outbreak.html
I’ve always thought this overpriced brand was a mediocre product in fancy packaging. Reading about the complete lack of hygienic practices as listed in those complaints is indeed, something straight out of Sinclair’s novel about the Chicago meatpacking industry.
Washing hands, food preparation surfaces, and all the kitchen equipment both before and after use is basic food safety. Listeria is in soil particles and contaminated water, which is why you always wash the produce before you eat it, or cut it up.
Both vinegar and lemon juice are excellent at killing those food borne illnesses. A 3/1 ratio of water/vinegar is a good way to rinse any leafy greens, and make your salads safe.
@beleroy:
Exactly. Let the free market handle everything, regulations are completely useless. I mean, obviously, if you die eating shitty meat from a company, you will never buy anything from that company ever again so yes, free market baby!
To utilize some trite phrases in a serious way:
To paraphrase Nietzsche, that which you eat may kill you, not make you stronger.
As many above have said, food regulations and competent, diligent sanitary practices are being scrapped.
You can run, but you can’t hide from the ‘accidental’ poisoning increasing everywhere.
To add to the number of anecdotes: In 2011 there were two major outbreaks of foodborne listeria illnesses in Germany caused by contaminated fresh sprouts and cucumbers (I confirmed it with a quick Google search of Czech news from that time). So being a vegetarian is no guarantee of not being affected by corporations cutting corners on hygiene. In fact, adherence to proper hygiene and sanitation is more important than personal dietary choices, there are plenty of foodborne illnesses that can be propagated by plant-based foods (Bacillus cereus for example, Clostridium botulinum can also propagate in canned veggies, etc).
Seems to me like the system is, sorta, working properly. In tha at least there are inspections. Imagine the situation at say a Homeopathy manufacturing plant?
@21: If the system was working properly, the issues would have been caught and corrected BEFORE a deadly outbreak occurred.
Fisher-Price recalling over 366K dumbbell toys due to potential choking hazard
Apparently you shouldn’t eat those either.
So I actually work in that industry and what Boar’s Head did was unbelievably negligent. The plant I work at here in Oregon (NOT Boar’s Head just to be clear), has an on site USDA inspector there every day. That person can shut us down in a heartbeat. These inspectors are cycled around to make sure they aren’t getting “too friendly” with us. I suspect there was something going on in Virginia that was preventing the sort of enforcement I deal with every day. How else would they have 69 flags and no response from USDA?
@24 Ray Ceeya:
“I suspect there was something going on in Virginia that was preventing the sort of enforcement I deal with every day.”
and his name is Glenn Youngkin
“heavy meat buildup” is definitely the name of my new thrash metal band
Umm… what?!
They’re Kraft or Oscar Meyer but with a better advertising campaign.
Seriously, why would anyone buy and eat BH, even before the current outbreak? Their products full of synthetic additives, food-grade petroleum products and the like, also fillers like gluten, etc. and come wrapped in plastic that may or may not be more nutritious than the product they are encasing.
We need a lot more of this:
https://wapo.st/3XmCwZV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Peanut_Corporation_of_America_recall
and less of the US mentality that “more is better” and “cheaper is better”, which is how we got Tyson, Purdue, ConAgra, Smithfield, etc.
BH hard salami ingredients
INGREDIENTS: PORK, BEEF, SALT, DEXTROSE, LACTIC ACID STARTER CULTURE, FLAVORINGS, NATURAL SMOKE FLAVORING, SPICE, SODIUM NITRITE, BHA, BHT, CITRIC ACID.
BH American cheese ingredients
American Cheese (Milk, Salt, Cheese Culture, Enzymes), Water, Cream, Sodium Phosphates, Paprika, Annatto, Salt.
Kraft Oscar Meyer cotto salami
MECHANICALLY SEPARATED CHICKEN, BEEF HEARTS, PORK, WATER, CORN SYRUP, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF SALT, GROUND MUSTARD SEED, SODIUM PHOSPHATES, FLAVOR, SODIUM PROPIONATE, SODIUM DIACETATE, SODIUM BENZOATE, DEXTROSE, SODIUM ASCORBATE, POTASSIUM CHLORIDE, SODIUM NITRITE, SUGAR, SOY LECITHIN.
Kraft American cheese ingredients
CHEDDAR CHEESE (CULTURED MILK, SALT, ENZYMES), SKIM MILK, MILKFAT, MILK, MILK PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, WHEY, CALCIUM PHOSPHATE, SODIUM PHOSPHATE, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF MODIFIED FOOD STARCH, SALT, LACTIC ACID, OLEORESIN PAPRIKA (COLOR), NATAMYCIN (A NATURAL MOLD INHIBITOR), ENZYMES, CHEESE CULTURE, ANNATTO (COLOR).
For anyone wondering what BHA is:
BHA is a synthetic, waxy, solid petrochemical. Its antioxidant properties have caused it to be widely used as a preservative in food, food packaging, animal feed, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, rubber, and petroleum products.
And BHT
also known as dibutylhydroxytoluene, is a lipophilic organic compound, chemically a derivative of phenol, that is useful for its antioxidant properties
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bha-and-bht-a-case-for-fresh/
“If you want to buy good clean oats, you must be willing to pay a fair price. If, however, you can be satisfied with oats that have already been through the horse… well, that comes cheaper.”
We often have shredded wheat for breakfast, ingredients: wheat
Or, oatmeal, ingredients: oats
And triscuit crackers: wheat, oil and sea salt
As we see above, over processed foods are a virtual chemistry set of bad additives. We try to avoid all that crap, but it is almost impossible.
Oh, becoming a vegetarian isn’t so bad, it could be wurst.
(channeling the ghost of Flip Wilson: ‘The devil made me do it’. And, with that I promise not to torture this blog any further today.)
@22 microraptor: I quite agree, hence the ‘sorta’ qualifier.
@28 Why eat processed foods at all? It’s not that I never do (I find it easier to buy organic bread from the local bakery) but I mostly gave up on breakfast cereals a long time ago–I usually have roast breakfast potatoes, or wild rice and some sort of fresh fruit. I gave up fast food and soda a quarter century ago (with certain exceptions–sometimes on road trips, it’s the only option) and I started feeling better within 2 months. My skin cleared up, hair was better, less GI tract issues. I don’t know that the synthetics & additives are necessarily going to kill you but they sure aren’t good for you either.
@24 Why were Michael & Stewart Parnell and their Peanut Co. of America (also based in Virginia) allowed to operate multiple plants with jaw-dropping health and safety violations for years if not decades? At least some judge gave out functional life sentences but only after multiple people died from their tainted products. (Among a laundry list of violations was the one in a Georgia plant that had a hole in the roof that allowed birds to fly in and defecate in the peanut butter.) My guess is that all the right people got paid off to look the other way.
Also, Oregon is one of the states that takes food and drug safety and purity rather more seriously than most other states. (Okay, maybe not Vermont or New York but still better than say, Arkansas or Alabama.) It also has its own state standards, not just the federal ones. (Oregon Tilth, etc.)
It’s often cheaper, and money is tight for anyone not in the 10% nowadays.
Some people live in areas where the only places to buy food anywhere close to their homes are dollar stores, and all they stock is processed food.
If transportation is a problem for someone (for disability and/or budgetary reasons) they may need to make fewer trips to the grocery store, and therefore need products with long shelf-lives, which often means preservative-laden stuff.
It’s also often fast to prepare, and for people for whom money is tight, time is often just as tight. Nobody who works three jobs just to make ends meet can afford to also spend hours each day slaving over a stove. Something they can just microwave for 30 seconds or just preheat/wait/bake for 20 minutes will be far preferable to anything with lengthy or complex preparation.
Meals with complex preparation also have correspondingly complex logistics: juggling a larger number of things you need to have in your freezer, fridge, or pantry to be able to make that meal. If you’re out of chicken nuggets, you’re out of chicken nuggets. If you’re out of pasta, tomato sauce, any of several different veggies, either of a couple of different cheeses, or ground beef, no lasagna/spaghetti/whatever for you tonight. So more complex meals likely mean more frequent store trips to top up different things that are running low. There’s also more expiry dates to keep track of, to make sure stuff is used before it’s no good. People with low reserves of money and time typically also have low reserves of “cognitive overhead capacity” to keep track of all this shit, and at the same time can ill afford a mistake that leads to having to throw out unused food. And if the mistake “merely” leaves them short one critical ingredient for each entree they might make, then it’s to the emergency stash of TV dinners or other long-shelf-life, preservative-laden, processed, stick-one-thing-in-the-oven-and-then-serve meals for that night, with the only alternatives being to go hungry or to order in/eat out, with the latter likely being too expensive (and so if resorted to probably from the cheapest places, i.e. preservative-laden, processed fast food).
So, in the end, class; often with an assist from race (good predictor of “do you have anywhere to get groceries from that doesn’t have ‘Dollar’ in the name?”) or disability (good predictor of “travel is so onerous I can only use stuff with 2+ weeks of shelf life” as well as of “benefits barely even cover rent and utilities, let alone groceries too”).
@31 I would also go a bit further that that. Some portion of the “processing” includes adding things that reduce the rate, or likelihood of molds, or other growths. This has, ironically, made them potentially less healthy (though I challenge someone to provide evidence of this in which the anti-preservative sides ‘studies’ are any less biased and almost entirely badly done, inconclusive, or weirdly always from anti-preservative groups, as it is likely for those that show no effect to come from the pro-preservative side). I consider such “evidence” either way to be a complete wash, since its damn near impossible, with humans, to, say, only feed 10,000 people substance X, and control 100% of all other substances, for 12 months, to get any useful data, which isn’t obscured, undermined, and rendered utterly useless, by the fact that this is not possible, and those 10,000 people might haver been doing 10 million different things that where actually responsible for your result. Add to that the fact that “animal studies” are often useless (in that even close analogs may have utterly different responses to something utterly harmless to them, or to humans, but dangerous to the opposite, and often those studies are cherry picked, when done correctly at all – hint, using mice prone to tumors, killing them all at one time, then using the number of tumors, which vary wildly, instead of only checking after they die naturally, is BAD. Worse when someone else does the same thing, with the same sweetener and the ones eating it lived longer, when allowed to die of age, but likely due to reduced calorie intake, not because of/in spite of the sweetener). Imho, everything I have seen makes these studies, without a better, more accurate, analog, dubious at best, short of an extreme example of risk, rather than a mere, “possible increase in risk of…”
That said, even “processed” stuff, as in with things added just to reduce spoilage, you can still get problems, and they are, if anything, worse with “natural” products. Case in point, there is a.. spore, I think, which can be found on a lot of types of noodles, where if they ferment, a) they won’t smell, or taste, any different, or bad, but b) the specific organism that can grow on them produces a toxin that is heat stable, so you can’t “cook it out”, and which is a chain catalyst – which is to say that when it gets into your blood stream, and then cells, it screw with energy production in your cells, in a way that breaks the process, lethally, but does not cause the toxin itself to break down, or otherwise go inert, so it just smashes the heck out of that cell, then moves on to another, and another, and another, for as long as your body doesn’t remove it as a waste product. Get enough in your system and it will not only shred the very organs needed to remove it, it will keep causing wide spread damage until you die, with no known way to stop it, slow it down, or remove it from the body mechanically.
And, that is only one of the various things that “totally natural” food can have on it, though likely the single worst one, short of eating literal poisons. I get the sense that merely cooking your noodles hot enough doesn’t necessarily kill the thing that, once the conditions are right, will grow and produce the toxin, so.. Whether you could add “preservatives” to stop it, I also don’t know, but.. again, its not the only thing out there, and some won’t survive “processing”.
Honestly, the biggest issue with processed food has almost all to do with way overdoing it with such preservatives – i.e., “Why add 1 ounce of salt that has a 90% effectiveness if you can add 5, and makes people want to eat it more?”, and the addition of things that have jack all effect on preservation – i.e., “Heh, if we and 10% more sugar people like it better!” Basically, we are doing the equivalent to our food that some farms do to crops, “Why only use as much fertilizer as needed when you can use 10 times as much, and create air pollution in the process? Actually figuring out exactly what is needed and only doing that take effort!”, and Idiocracy’s lovely idea of, “Electrolytes! Plants want it!” Its not that processing is bad, in and of itself, its that they overdo it, and don’t give a damn about the result, outside of, “Stuff we put in. People want it!!”
@31 Money is tight for everyone. I have a 70 hour work week so I’m not exactly a stranger to lack of free time.It’s also true that a lot of people live in food deserts.
That said, people still have choices. My neighbor is a single mom who gets public assistance and raised the two kids she still had (one older daughter is now in a drug gang and one older son died) on a steady diet of fast food and junk food. I am well aware that money is an issue for her. At the same time, the person who never has any time or money for real food always has both time and money for her alcohol and her weed–every night, for 3-4 hours. (Her cigarettes, however, are a 24/7 thing.) She can live her life however she wants, I just hear her protestations of “no money” and “no time” with some skepticism.
The foods you point out (correctly) as being a lot of people’s “go-to” foods are just as expensive as regular food. The price for a 2 lbs bag of Tyson’s chicken nuggets is the same price as a 2 lbs organic whole chicken from Whole Foods. (Mind you, anyone actually surviving on food stamps isn’t going to be buying either one of those things on under $2/day.) If you have time to preheat/bake something for 20 minutes, then you have time to fry or broil something in that same range/oven. Frozen vegetables can be boiled or microwaved in the same amount of time as overpriced and unhealthy frozen meals. You can bake a potato in a microwave in under 5 minutes, which is the same amount of time to boil canned soup or frozen vegetables on a stove. Most people have choices, and what they mostly choose is convenience and crap food that tastes good (or that we’ve been conditioned from childhood to believe tastes good. Looking at you, fast food franchises, with your merchandising tie ins.)
For the record, you can make vegetarian lasagna out of shelf-stable products, with the exception of the cheeses, which are largely refrigerator stable. Not everything has to have meat in it.
I’d also like to point out that most expiration dates on food, with certain exceptions like milk, meat and bread, have literally nothing to do with the actual food safety. They are largely put on packaging to shame supermarkets into disposing of unsold but otherwise usable products and buying more product from the manufacturers.
@32 BRAWNDO! WHAT PLANTS CRAVE. (It has electrolytes!)
The fast food and processed food industry bears a remarkable resemblance to the tobacco industry. Their products are literally killing their customers and said companies are literally coming up with new ways to get people addicted faster and younger.
If nothing else, the McDonald’s coffee lawsuit showed the world that fast food chains will happily harm their customers and employees if it means higher profit margins. McDonald’s was perfectly aware that their exceptionally hot coffee was literally dangerously hot but their internal analysis showed that hotter coffee sold more coffee, so they continued to sell the hotter coffee, injured customers and employees be damned. Even with the cost of litigation and payout, they still came out ahead financially by continuing to sell the hotter coffee.
Humans are biologically programmed to crave salt, sugar, fat and protein because those foods that had those things in abundance were the foods that allowed us to survive and thrive back when we still had tails. Processed food companies are acutely aware of this, which is why processed foods are full of those things, along with flavor additives, since without the flavor additives, the food in question would taste like crap.
You might find this interesting.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/poison-squad-gloom-horror-unrelieved/
or just check out The Poison Squad from PBS
https://www.eater.com/2020/1/28/21112258/pbs-the-poison-squad-documentary-food-regulation-history-deborah-blum-interview