Kerry Inc., a subsidiary of Kerry Group, has pleaded guilty to a charge that it manufactured breakfast cereal under insanitary conditions at a facility in the US that was linked to a 2018 salmonella outbreak.
The food company pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of distributing adulterated cereal, marketed as Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, manufactured at its plant at Gridley, Illinois, which it later closed.
Kerry Inc. has agreed to pay a criminal fine and forfeiture amount totalling $19.228 million (€17.95 million).
If the guilty plea is accepted by the court, this will constitute the largest-ever criminal penalty following a criminal conviction in a food safety case in the US.
Salmonella
According to the plea agreement, tests performed as part of Kerry’s environmental monitoring programme found numerous instances of salmonella in the environment at the Gridley facility.
Between June 2016 and June 2018, routine environmental tests detected salmonella in the plant approximately 81 times, including at least one positive salmonella sample each month.
Employees at the plant routinely failed to implement corrective and preventative actions to address positive salmonella tests.
In June 2018, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that an ongoing outbreak of salmonellosis cases in the US could be traced to Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal produced at Kerry’s Gridley facility.
In response, Kellogg’s voluntarily recalled all Honey Smacks manufactured at the plant since June 2017.
The CDC eventually identified more than 130 cases of salmonellosis linked to the outbreak, with illness onset dates beginning in March 2018. There were no deaths related to the outbreak.
The federal court in Illinois has set a March 14, 2023 sentencing date for Kerry.
Commenting on the case, Justin D. Green, assistant commissioner for FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations said:
“Today’s announcement should serve as a reminder that food manufacturers have a critical responsibility to produce and sell food that is safe for American consumers to eat.
“We will continue to pursue and bring to justice those who put the public health at risk by allowing contaminated foods to enter the US marketplace,” he said.
Kerry Group
In a statement, Kerry said that it “regrets the unacceptable practices and failures that occurred at Gridley”.
“Arising from the issues, conduct and practices that occurred there, the company made the decision to permanently close the plant.
“The company also undertook a comprehensive review of its food safety practices, policies and oversight, with a particular focus on ensuring adherence to group standards and governance.
“Though the issues at Gridley were plant-specific in nature, 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,” the company said.
The statement noted that the penalty does not affect the expected 2022 or 2023 Kerry Group earnings.
In a related case, Ravi K. Chermala, Kerry’s director of quality assurance until September 2018, previously pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of causing the introduction of adulterated food into interstate commerce.
Chermala oversaw the sanitation programmes at various Kerry manufacturing plants, including the Gridley facility.
He admitted that between June 2016 and June 2018, he directed subordinates not to report certain information to Kellogg’s about conditions at the Gridley facility.
He also directed employees to alter the plant’s programme for monitoring for the presence of pathogens.
Chermala is due to be sentenced on February 16, 2023.