A US court has accepted a plea deal reached between Kerry Inc., a subsidiary of Kerry Group, and the US Department of Justice in relation to a 2018 product recall linked to a salmonella outbreak.
On February 3, 2023, Kerry Inc. pleaded guilty to a charge that it manufactured a breakfast cereal, marketed as Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, under insanitary conditions at a facility in Gridley, Illinois, which it later closed.
Last Thursday (March 23), US Magistrate Judge Jonathan E. Hawley accepted the proposed plea agreement, which requires Kerry Inc. to pay a criminal fine and forfeiture amount totalling $19.228 million (€17.95 million) as part of its sentence.
This is the largest-ever criminal penalty following a criminal conviction in a food safety case in the US.
Court
According to court documents, between June 2016 and June 2018 managers and employees at the Gridley facility did not adhere to appropriate practices to ensure sanitary conditions.
During that timeframe, routine environmental tests showed approximately 81 positive environmental salmonella samples.
The plea agreement also states that, during that period, the Gridley facility routinely failed to accurately document corrective and preventative action regarding positive tests from its environmental monitoring program.
In June 2018, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that an ongoing outbreak of salmonellosis cases in the US could be traced to Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal produced at the Gridley Facility.
In response, Kellogg’s voluntarily recalled all Honey Smacks produced during 2017.
The CDC eventually identified more than 130 cases of salmonellosis linked to the outbreak with illness onset dates beginning in March 2018. The CDC did not identify any deaths related to the outbreak.
In a statement issued previously, Kerry Group said that it “regrets the unacceptable practices and failures that occurred at Gridley”.
Along with permanently closing 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”.