Federal meat inspectors documented black mold, water dripping over meat and dead flies at a Virginia Boar’s Head deli meat plant that has now been linked to nine deaths from listeria, according to records.
Over the course of a year, food safety inspectors, who are a constant presence in meat facilities across the United States, noted escalating problems at the plant.
Under U.S. Department of Agriculture rules, the processing facility, in rural Virginia, was expected to swab for listeria, which the agency considers a “zero tolerance” concern that can spur an immediate recall. Yet the inspectors — who also swab and test for listeria, a lethal bacteria — do not appear to have been the first to prompt a recall of more than seven million pounds of ham, salami, hot dogs and other meats by Boar’s Head.
The alarm rang after people like Günter Morgenstein, a hair stylist renowned in coastal Virginia, fell gravely ill. As Mr. Morgenstein, an active 88-year-old known as Garshon, grew frail in the hospital in early July, his family racked their brains to think of everything he had eaten in recent weeks.
As listeria illnesses spread, a disease detective in Maryland began to suspect liverwurst as the common thread, given the older age of the hospitalized patients. Her hunch proved correct: Whole genome sequencing matched the patients’ bacteria to Boar’s Head liverwurst bought at a store, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, setting off the recall of 3,500 tons of meat.
At the same time, U.S.D.A. inspectors documented flies, bits of meat on food-contact surfaces and mold on a wall at the Boar’s Head plant in Jarratt, Va. From June 2023 through this August, inspectors listed 84 problems at the facility. Listeria was not mentioned in more 80 pages of inspection records on the plant that were released by the agency.
