Blood puddles, mold, tainted meat, bugs: Boar's Head inspections are horrifying | Hacker News Reader

Blood puddles, mold, tainted meat, bugs: Boar's Head inspections are horrifying

arstechnica.com

123 pointsspeckx121 comments

"We are conducting an extensive investigation, working closely with the USDA and government regulatory agencies, as well as with the industry’s leading food safety experts, to determine how our liverwurst produced at our Jarratt, Virginia facility was adulterated and to prevent it from happening again..."

It's pretty clear the failure was with management. They didn't enforce basic standards of cleanliness. If the whole company isn't shut down, their facilities should be inspected frequently to ensure they are compliant with health regulations.

I mean, the violations should result in some form of shutting down the facility until it's resolved.

Without consequences, all those inspections do nothing

As mentioned in TFA, the Boars Head Virginia plant has been shut down since the inspection issues in July.

It's crazy there aren't at least annual inspections of food production facilities which would have unearthed the disgusting lack of care sooner. They market themselves as a premium brand, which makes this look even worse.

I mean a month shutdown isn't much of a punishment. They'll go back online, run their staff over capacity, and neglect cleaning and maintenance all over again.

I was a customer, regularly buying several different products including lunch meats and I think I actually did get sick from the lunch meat back around when the recalls were announced.

Never again.

That's basically why we need regulation.

Hardcore libertarians say the free market would fix this, but even if you do get sick it's hard to attribute to which exact product you got sickness from. And in any case this is all after the fact that you bought the thing.

9 people died from this outbreak. The settlements from those 9 deaths should bankrupt the company and put them out of business, or at least close that facility permanently. I feel sorry for the innocent people who may lose their jobs, but those are the same people that should have prevented the problem to begin with. That factory was a stinking mess, and it should have been completely obvious to everyone who worked there.

They inspect you more often when there's been problems recently. Might be a year or two before the inspections to back to annual.

At least that's what our inspectors do - if there's something bad, they'll check up on it later.

Considering this report, why only this facility?

> It's pretty clear the failure was with management.

It’s more than that though, why were the issues identified not acted on?

Management kept the plant running despite the issues, which probably kept their board happy. That might not be bad management from their perspective.

Is corruption part of this? Many regulatory bodies have a slightly-too-cosy relationship with those they regulate, with a revolving door relationship for staff.

There is also the fact that there is a party in government literally dedicated to shrinking government to the point where it cannot effectively inspect or regulate. The IRS for example is not well funded enough to actually catch rampant tax evasion.

20 years ago I was working at Accenture and they were giving tax software to states for “free” including cracking down on delinquent or underpaying entities. By “free” I mean they received a percentage of any additional tax revenue they brought in through their enforcement. The state got additional revenue it would have otherwise not received without any additional cost, possibly cheaper than had they hired full time staff to do the same job since Accenture built for one state and ported to the rest.

It’s not about deliquent payments but auditing fraudulent returns. Particularly for rich people using all sorts of novel ways to hide taxable money, it does require some investigation to dive deep.

That’s the enforcement part.

> prevent it from happening again

But the response from management makes it clear they still have their head stuck... in the sand. By refering to the liverwurst when the report makes it clear the problems at the plant were affecting other products - they just are lucky these have not been identified as having killed anyone...

And THAT is the last straw for me and Boar's Head: A recall is fine IF it doesn't paper over lots of other problems. I'm done with Boar's Head as a whole until the rest of management notices this ridiculousity and proclaims a company-wide investigation and cleanup - and then later "distances" itself from incompetent management. That's sad: I have spent a lot of money on their London Broil roast beef, and now I have to find other producers.

> For instance, on June 10, an inspector entered the "pickle vat pump room" and noted "heavy meat buildup" on the walls, which were also crawling with flies and gnats.

I haven't seen much upside from going vegetarian, but at least I don't have to worry about accidentally eating food from a place like the above.

They also do cheese (vegetarian, no animal rennet), various sauces, pickles...

They scrape the floors at places like this to make blood meal (i.e. organic fertlizer).

> According to the CDC, one significant outbreak in 2020 was linked to onions, resulting in around 1,127 reported cases of Salmonella across 48 states.

Vegetables can also be contaminated with bad bacteria and they do get contaminated in practice.

There are plenty outbreaks caused by contaminated salads and other vegetables.

Can’t get hepatitis from pepperoni.

But can get legionella from simple tap water. Microbes are everywhere.

I'm not excusing the horrible sanitary practices some businesses have, and the complicity of their employees, but being vegetarian is not a recipe to become free of dangerous diseases caused by microbes.

If anything raw veggies are a large disease vector.

Yeah, I've gotten food poisoning a few times from leafy green salads.

But at least, when I'm slumped over porcelain, and praying for death, I don't have the horror film image of "heavy meat buildup" on the walls.

Indeed, there was a recent e coli outbreak on salad in the UK and one person died[1]

1 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1xl518w8do

The meat buildup I can deal with, but the flies are such a nuisance.

The most dangerous product in a typical kitchen is lettuce. Bon appetit.

What if you grew it yourself?

It's fine if you wash it well, which restaurants and salad bars almost never do. Same for raw spinach. Also, ensure that surfaces and hands are sanitary.

Washing produce with water doesn't help much: https://www.consumerreports.org/e-coli/washing-greens-protec... It can reduce the bacterial load, but it won't eliminate it.

You need to wash things at least with soap to make an impact on bacteria, but who does that?

Raw spinach too, a very close second.

> The most dangerous product in a typical kitchen is lettuce. Bon appetit.

What is the quantitative definition of "dangerous?"

The chances of dying from food poisoning after eating it, if it's used in a normal fashion.

Lettuce is usually eaten raw and uncooked, and it can't really be washed thoroughly. It's also a leafy green that grows directly out of the ground, so it has the greatest chance to be contaminated by ...erm... organic fertilizers, rodent poop, and other sources of bacteria.

The consistency of widespread foodborne illnesses coming from vegetables is unmatched

Your horror is an artifact of the industrialization of food production not the fact of meat at a food

These insane practices aren’t happening with pastoral nomadic herders or even pasture raised farms in the US

Do you like potatoes and strawberries? Welp. One of the pesticides California's green lit is also used to stimulate tumor growth in animals. Presumably not much is left on the food itself (although strawberries make great chemical sponges), but Dichloropropene is definitely a problem in the communities surrounding the farms.

Like cheap wine? Things haven't gotten much better from Chavez's days especially if you look at the cheaper brands like Charles Shaw. Plenty of young, dead, farm workers because safety standards are barely enforced.

Are you just worried about pathogens? Cantaloupes were the main vector in the 2011 listeria outbreak in the US and 2018 listeria outbreak in Australia, and a salmonella outbreak this year in the US. The 2008 salmonella outbreak in the US was the largest since the 80s, and that was spread by cilantro and peppers.

2009 saw a big salmonella outbreak in the US spread by peanut products. If you're worried about unsanitary factory conditions, you probably don't want to read up on that.

Big ag is gross whether it's plant or animal.

What pesticide is this?

Dichloropropene?

There are some nasty parasites that can get onto your vegetarian produce. For example, Rat-Lung Worm disease parasite, can get onto produce from slugs and slug mucus. If you eat this parasite it can go into your brain and mess you up bad (permanently).

I would rather eat a piece of meat (cooked) than a piece of lettuce that is grown in an area that is affected by this parasite.

What a strange name for something in slugs.

I believe it's angiostrongyloides. The OP's description is accurate. It's actually a known problem in Hawaii, though elsewhere too, but with inadequate recognition.

They do live in rat lungs.

We can go back to read the Jungle by Upton now. Something never changes.

I mean, The Jungle is fiction.

Sort of

It's like The Wire of meat packing.

Where’s Ona, Phil? Where’s Ona?

Here's a non-fiction documentary to the same effect:

https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch

The Jungle actually provoked change.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle#Federal_response

It's just that regulatory capture has resulted in some portion of that change being rolled back.

The US has ceased to remain a first world country. It is not a third world country yet, but it's getting there. Corruption and self-interest at all levels of government has supplanted the pursuit of becoming a better nation. It remains to be seen whether this extreme rise of self-interest at the expense of the collective/national/global/cosmic interest ultimately succeeds or fails.

This is a story about a single private company, the US is very much a 1st world country as we have a working meat inspection program, independent journalist covering the topic, alternate products from competing vendors, and numerous lively and open discussions involving concerned citizens.

How exactly does this story support the conclusion we are becoming corrupt?

> we have a working meat inspection program

Huh. That's an abject lie. If there were a working inspection program, this would never have happened. It wouldn't even have come close.

The best case is that it never happens. The second best case is that it’s caught as soon as it happens and stopped then. The third best case is that it’s caught some time after it happens and stopped before it has any external consequences (people getting sick). The fourth best case is that it’s caught some time after it happens but only stopped after external consequences.

Etcetera etcetera. Throw in another dimension of punishment besides just stopping operations and it gets more complex. With a little imagination, the worst cases are much worse than any of the above. We can be dissatisfied with the actual circumstances but still recognize the nuanced factors which might make up a “working” system.

In your description, nine people dying, 57 hospitalized, is the "fourth best outcome", and added "well, there are much worse scenarios" (and not just around the raw numbers, but the progression of events).

I am struggling to comprehend what these much worse scenarios are, beyond "we just say fuck it and let them continue to sell the stuff"?

It was not caught because of inspections, or because someone at the plant said that maybe it was time to fix this. It was only caught because people got sick, aka died. That's not "working".

>we have a working meat inspection program

????

The topic of discussion is how a meat plant was allowed to operate despite egregiously failing not just safety rules and procedures but just plain common sense.

You consider that working?

Yes? Failures being identified? Consequences for the failure?

If your definition of “first world country” is no company ever cuts corners, well, name one. It’s probably just Singapore.

The failures were identified after many people got sick and there was no choice but to start an "RCA."

I would remind you that these "failures" were not some black swan level of event that we can't foresee, it was plain and direct negligence.

The rotten mean was literally, and I mean quite literally, piling up.

You are being EXTREMELY outright dishonest in your perspectives here. I don't say this lightly, there is no possibility of reconciling your statements and the facts of the case.

Most first world countries have long and vivid histories of food safety scandals. In the US in the 2000s, the PCA comes to mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut_Corporation_of_America

The UK had mad cow disease, Italy continues to deal with diluted and falsified olive oil, the EU has had repeated horse meat scandals. Most recently Japan had a health food supplement scandal in which many people died.

Not sure what your point is? Especially when the comparisons aren't really proportional.

I don't consider letting rotten meat pileup an example of a working inspection process, which is what I specifically responded to, first world or not.

Yes, I think this is a failure of the system but not a failed system. I will go to grocery store this weekend and buy meat to serve to my family and I will not for even a split second assume the meat will hurt them or me, because in a country of 350 million people, these types of things are very very rare.

Our food safety systems work and can be trusted and when a failure happens we talk about it, it makes the news, and changes happen. I really believe that.

You're missing the part where people had to die.

Nah, don’t bet against us.

I'm sure those in the Roman Empire said the same thing.

They were right for an awfully long time.

Back then, communication and movement were slow, but now they aren't. The point is that time is now compressed. Things happen much faster and at an accelerating pace. The only thing that is still slow is the adaptability of the human mind to new ideas, because on average, it requires older generations to die.

I don’t think first and third world countries is a useful metaphor any more and It certainly is out of place here. This is one company that is gross. I am Not sure why one article about one gross company should stand as an example of an entire country’s decline. Weird.

It’s amazing how social media can create a picture that doesn’t exist huh?

This is a single plant among hundreds in the US.

If I go to a doctors office that doesn’t follow sterile procedures, would you call it a 3rd world country? Even knowing there are thousands that do follow regulations?

That would be a silly conclusion.

You don't know or understand how it's supposed to work. Every plant is supposed to be routinely inspected, and not be allowed to operate if it is not sanitary. If the inspection process didn't work for this one plant, it means it is not guaranteed to work for any plant.

Basically, it has been left up to the goodness of the plants to operate themselves how they like. That's how it is expected in the third world.

Ahhh, I see where you're confused. You don't know how it works in the third world.

No, in the third world, inspections aren't even done. Laws are created that aren't enforced, inspection teams aren't funded, and inspectors are bribed.

None of that is happening in the US.

And no, constant inspections is not how it's done. Even in Europe, it's random inspections and mostly self-regulation.

This bums me because we really enjoyed Boar's Head meats. And they were always so expensive too! This furthers my distrust of anything corporate and the never ending greed. We're done with BH and will stick to locally sourced deli meat as an occasional treat. Mostly we'll just avoid deli meats altogether because it's healthier to.

Avoid delicatessen meats in USA. Most of them are bad and the food poisoning risks are not worth the convenience.

Buy imported ham from Italy or Iberia instead.

> BH vs local producer

Unfortunately it's not only the producers... Pay attention to the deli crew at your store and notice how often they mess up on safe handling. Third world is not far off.

Let's not forget the constant E. coli and Salmonella cases of food poisoning on veggies, so, vegans, please, don't even start this! As an omnivore, I've always stayed off Boar's Head, because they were questionable even 20 years ago, when I first saw there stuff at Persian stores in Orange County, California!

I mean I'm not trying to flamebate but isn't e. coli still connected to meat from the manure used to fertilize plants?

But it also applies to dairy and eggs.

Therefore veganism seems a pertinent subject here.

Privatizing safety: https://x.com/kiswanson/status/1829221009486163968?s=46&t=Hx...

Clearly we need to put all food inspection reports online in the US.

People would stop eating

right now people spend 1k/mo on pharmaceuticals to help them stop eating, and you’re telling me we could do that just with responsible government?

I think they are. On mobile right now so can't check, but I've looked up local restaurants' inspection results online.

Blood puddles, mold, tainted meat, bugs, wanton violence and market research. It was just another day at the office for Ralph, who was finding it difficult to sit in his tattered chair, the pinworm infection peaking from a recent diet of vending machine snacks and the bottom-shelf gin within his thermos. It was time to replace a nicotine patch, the one on the other arm was still good, but the left was stale and soaked in sweat. When he found himself immersed in ideations of regulators in place of the carcases entering the hissing, gurgling transglutaminizer, particularly those who enacted the smoking ban, it was time for another patch, and a shot too. He swatted a fly with resignation, a futile gesture in the chamber of carion that was his bread and butter, his job at Boar's Head.

Reminds me of "The Torture Never Stops".

I'm sure it's bad, but the article isn't providing (unless I missed it) the crucial bit of information needed to evaluate this story, which is how these inspection results depart from the norm, which may also frequently be gnarly (agriculture is gnarly and gets gnarlier as it scales), but has not repeatedly generated listeria outbreaks.

We shouldn't necessarily focus on the norm but rather on what we would like to see in these facilities to ensure the safety of the people consuming these products. One of the stories my wife's OB told her about consuming uncooked lunch meat was about a case where a pregnant woman ate some lunch meat that was contaminated with listeria, and the resulting infection was so severe that some of her limbs had to be amputated. So we probably shouldn't tolerate this norm.

So that might be true --- is almost certainly true --- but that's an argument you'd ideally be making from the full set of facts (or independent of the facts, as an ideal). It's not an evaluation of the journalism or analysis itself, which deserves, for its own reasons, to be taken seriously.

Pregnant women are immune compromised and should be avoiding lunch meat

Can always cook it. Listeria is very sensitive to heat (and doesn’t produce toxins that cooking doesn’t protect you from).

All the small-scale meat packers (not a representative sample) I've purchased from were sterile before they closed before the day and not very untidy during the process. We've kept a similar attitude ourselves when butchering deer, cows, pigs, moose, .... It's just not that hard to keep things clean.

A single fly getting in isn't the end of the world, but an environment with a lot of flies indicates something horribly wrong (no protection from the outside, or maggots and an environment inside otherwise conducive to the production of flies).

You're right that it gets gnarlier as it scales, but as it scales you can also afford to build rooms designed to be pressure-washed without moving the equipment. It's even cheaper and easier per unit of meat to wash a room that way than to hand-wash the damned thing.

Maybe that's the norm, and maybe the listeria outbreak is for other reasons, but the conditions described are bad regardless of how commonplace they are or how much they contributed to those deaths.

Absolutely. I would strongly prefer sterile meat processing facilities with rigorous HACCP plans. I'm also aware though that meat processing has consolidated pretty dramatically over the last 20 years, to the point where most meat sourced from Illinois livestock is processed in a single plant.

Two important things I think I'd want to know:

* How variable the mapping is from these kinds of inspection results to pathogen outbreaks in packaged product

* How common these kinds of inspection results are industry-wide

This article and report is the first side of it. Yes, now we might hope for an investigative journalist to try and dig wider / further around.

Providing basic context for facts isn't the province of 'investigative journalism'. It's nuts-and-bolts basic journalism.

Fair on inspection report stats, yes. Or quite a bit of research for stats vs reality.

And if I'm not mistaken, agriculture still generates E Coli, salmonella and such recalls. And restaurants still generate constant small scale food poisonings. And that's after what the food industry does test for (some of the time) and inspects for (some of the time). Food testing kits has been an industry for a long time already and the need won't go away just for being cleaner - see product lines like these https://www.neogen.com/industries/milling-grain/ or https://www.neogen.com/industries/food-beverage/ or https://www.neogen.com/categories/environmental-monitoring/

Meanwhile in France, "ecological transition" minister just quietly double [0] the animal number threshold to be considered intensive breeding. Date the bill were presented : the day after a big gouvernement buzz.

Non-intensive breeders are considered trustful here and their odd to face an official control in a lifetime are around 33% (the control is booked, not surprise visit).

Now, small business breeders can raise up to 85000 chickens.

0 (fr) https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jorf/id/JORFTEXT000049690143

I’ve seen once how commercial cold cuts are being produced. I never want to try those again, it’s absolutley nauseating.

Have you heard the phrase, “laws and sausage”?

I mean, there's a big difference between highly processed stuff like bologna, vs. stuff like ham that is basically just deboned, cured, cooked, and sealed up in a single piece to be sliced at the deli.

If you stick to the cold cuts that are just hunks of whole meat in a recognizable "animal part" shape -- ham, turkey, roast beef, etc. -- those seem perfectly fine. Heck, some of them (like roast beef) your grocery store might actually make in-house.

I also find the dried cured meats to be totally fine -- salami, pepperoni, etc.

When I see ham that comes in a rectangle, or stuff like bologna or liverwurst, then I can understand being a bit more suspect...

What's the difference between bologna and salami? Both are sausages made of ground pork.

For preservation? The salt content iirc, but there may be something else

Bologna is cooked, salami cured. In context, I don't think the distinction is important.

I'd guess it's that they never see anything but Oscar Meyer and competitors bologna, while there's deluxe salami but as this story shows that doesn't really make one more trustworthy.

This is disappointing. I thought Boar’s Head was the high quality stuff.

I had never heard of them before yesterday when I happened to be browsing On a Roll's menu touting their Boar's Head BLT which I mistook for an actual cut of meat. So it was a selling point before.

The MBAs must not be made to read The Jungle as undergrads any more.

Can't say I'm surprised given the company

For those of us that don't know them, this comment is not helpful in changing hearts and minds

Man, I love being a vegetarian.

listeria spreads thrives/spreads through sprouts and melons, among other foods including milk and meats.

I think its interesting the number of folks these stories pull out who have gone vegan or vegetarian as a rejection of our food production system (something I understand) but have been.. tricked? into a simplistic kind of thinking that meat==bad.

I can say on a farm, processing poultry is probably the worst. Its a fair intuition that murdering a living creature cause its tasty is overall gonna be a nasty endeavor. But a farmer has to live on a land, often for generations and that death comes at the end of a whole lotta care and nurturing. Theres a balance.

But these companies aren't farms, and the disconnect of humanity from the work is the issue. That exploitation happens at all levels, to workers, to animals, to customers of the product. Thats the thing that has to be fought and it ain't as simple as just product type $X is bad as you shop at the same grocery chain owned by the same people supplied by the same suppliers.

Man you should talk with more vegetarians about their motivations, there’s way more in it than “meat==bad“. But telling someone it has been tricked is not the best way to engage a conversation.

"How do you know someone is vegan? They'll tell you."

You realize how often salad greens and lettuce and various veggies are recalled due to salmonella, listeria, and so forth? Here's one from just last month:

https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety...

I can't imagine where you would get the idea that being a vegetarian somehow benefits you here, or why you would bring it up.

Ha! The age old vegetarian/vegan joke is too real

It sounds horrifying but it's hard to tell how much more horrifying it is than the average meat processing plant. They're big, complex, dirty facilities at the best of times. I've never seen the inside of a meat processing plant. Presumably the journalist hasn't either. The situation is bad, yes (69 violations in a year). But I don't know exactly how bad. Overall I'm thankful for the guys who work in these places so that the rest of us can keep our eyes averted from death.

    > Overall I'm thankful for the guys who work in these places so that the rest of us can keep our eyes averted from death.

That's what your focused on? Not the contamination and listeria?

    > The situation is bad, yes (69 violations in a year). But I don't know exactly how bad.

9 people dead so far. So yeah, it's bad.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/death-toll-now-8-lis...

I caught the subtext as "how bad those violations were in relation to the industry" and don't think anyone has cast any doubt on how bad a listeria outbreak is.

No. Food production is clean, must be clean, and if it is not clean it is not just incompetence it is criminal.

The inspectors and regulatory agencies failed to do their jobs and people died.

What about the actual packer? Why do we not hold them responsible here too? It's all well and good to blame the USDA but they're a check on the packer. It seems like Boar's Head has a cavalier attitude toward product safety that was bound to get a bunch of people killed sooner or later. I realize that this is the norm in these facilities so why do we do nothing to actually regulate them? And why is the focus on how the USDA isn't doing it's job? Clearly the problems are being identified but the actual regulations have no teeth.

I'm not sure about these slightly down stream, but for actual meat packers they cannot legally operate without UDSA on site moment to moment. USDA should have been responsible for fining and corrective actions long before they started killing people. The stupid thing is that the regulations do have teeth. They can shut you down quite easily.

> What about the actual packer? Why do we not hold them responsible here too?

exactly. i find it incredibly troubling how often people are willing to blame it on only one party—the reality is, it’s both.

both.

we need to hold these greedy people responsible for cutting costs to the point that they are absolutely responsible for people falling sick and dying. and we need to figure out how we get to a point where the regulators a) are adversarial, and b) have teeth, c) have funding and d) use those teeth.

the tendency towards letting greedy people off the hook is troublesome.

> It sounds horrifying but it's hard to tell how much more horrifying it is than the average meat processing plant. They're big, complex, dirty facilities at the best of times. I've never seen the inside of a meat processing plant.

How do you say that they're big, complex, dirty facilities at the best of times, then immediately say you haven't ever seen inside one?

> Presumably the journalist hasn't either.

Why would you presume this? Do you presume the inspectors aren't familiar with meat processing either?

> Overall I'm thankful for the guys who work in these places so that the rest of us can keep our eyes averted from death.

Just random praise for the company that is getting busted for horrific health violations. Do you have any praise for the facilities that aren't crawling with vermin and filth?

He said he's thankful for "the guys who work in these plants", which is not the same thing as being thankful for the companies that operate them or their policies. Being thankful for rank-and-file meat processing employees doesn't seem like a crazy sentiment. It's a very tough job.

Meat processing is inherently messy, but it should never be dirty. Breaking down a carcass inevitably spreads around a lot of blood and meat scraps, which is precisely why cleaning is so important - there's nothing unhygienic about that debris unless it's allowed to accumulate and fester.

There is no excuse for the kind of violations described in this report, nor is there any excuse for allowing such a dangerous plant to continue operating. In my country, I would expect an inspector to immediately close a plant in such a state; following prosecution, there would be a real possibility of the operators being indefinitely prohibited from operating any food business.

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