Kerry pays a record fine after resolving the Salmonella lawsuit.
Kerry Inc. entered a guilty plea on February 3 to the accusation that it produced breakfast cereal that was ready to eat in an unhygienic setting at a Gridley, Illinois, facility. The facility was connected to a Salmonella incident in 2018 that affected Kellogg’s Honey Smacks.
Kerry agreed to pay a criminal fine and forfeiture sum totaling $19.228 million in exchange for entering a guilty plea in the federal court located in Peoria, Illinois. The US Department of Justice claims that if the court approves the $19.228 million fine and forfeiture, it will be the highest criminal penalty in history after a conviction in a food safety case.
Kerry expressed contrition for the improper actions and mistakes that took place at Gridley. Due to the problems, behaviors, and policies that transpired there, the firm decided to close the facility down permanently. Additionally, the business reviewed all of its food safety procedures, guidelines, and monitoring, paying special attention to making sure that group standards and governance were followed.
“Kerry has invested and continues to invest significantly in all aspects of its food safety and quality processes and to further embed safety as a central pillar in everything that it does, even though the issues at Gridley were plant-specific in nature.”
Assistant Commissioner Justin D. Green of the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations continued, saying that the news made today should serve as a reminder to food manufacturers of their vital duty to create and market food that is safe for consumption by American people. We’ll keep looking for and prosecuting those who allow tainted food to reach the US market in order to protect the public’s health.
Kerry was accused by the DOJ of manufacturing Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal in filthy conditions and distributing it in violation of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, according to recently released criminal information. As per the plea agreement, tests conducted as part of Kerry’s environmental monitoring program discovered multiple cases of Salmonella in the Gridley facility’s surroundings.
“During the time period June 2016 to June 2018, routine environmental tests detected Salmonella in the plant approximately 81 times, including at least one positive Salmonella sample each month,” the DOJ said. “According to the plea agreement, employees at the Gridley facility routinely failed to implement corrective and preventative actions (CAPAs) to address positive Salmonella tests.
“Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal, which is made at Kerry’s Gridley facility, may be linked to an ongoing outbreak of salmonellosis infections in the United States, according to a June 2018 announcement from the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As a result, starting in June 2017, Kellogg’s voluntarily recalled every Honey Smack produced at the facility. In the end, the CDC discovered over 130 cases of salmonellosis connected to the outbreak, with symptoms first appearing in March 2018. No deaths linked to the outbreak were reported by the CDC.
A former Kerry quality assurance director entered a guilty plea to three misdemeanor counts of inducing the introduction of tainted food into interstate commerce around the end of October. The director was in charge of the sanitation initiatives at several Kerry production sites, such as the Gridley plant that produced Kellogg’s Honey Smacks ready-to-eat cereal for the Kellogg Co., which is headquartered in Battle Creek, Michigan.