State Assailed for Its Early Report Absolving Milk

State agriculture inspectors were criticized by a high-level Los Angeles County health official Tuesday for concluding that milk used to make a Mexican-style cheese linked to at least 31 deaths was properly pasteurized.

Dr. Shirley Fannin, the county’s associate director of communicable disease control, said it was “premature” for state officials to have made such statements last weekend, at a time when health officials were still awaiting results of milk and cheese cultures taken at the Jalisco Mexican Products Inc. plant in Artesia.

“When you make statements like that you have to have cultures, and there is no way you can grow cultures from Friday to Saturday or Sunday,” Fannin said. “I don’t know how to prove something in that period of time.

“Nobody has a clean bill of health yet,” she added.

Richard L. Tate, chief of the milk and dairy foods control branch of the state Food and Agriculture Department in Sacramento, said his inspectors “are going to be doing a lot of additional work on the pasteurization process.”

But Tate stressed that the equipment was working properly when they investigated it last week. He said only one person was licensed to use the pasteurizing equipment at the Jalisco plant, and investigators are still trying to determine whether unlicensed employees ran the equipment.

More Tests Planned

Department spokeswoman Jan Wessell said there are still many other tests to be made involving the pasteurizing equipment. She said department inspectors are still awaiting results of test cultures and that in no way did they mean to imply that the investigators had already made a final determination on the pasteurization.

Wessell said tests will be conducted to see if there are any “pin holes” in the equipment that would allow contamination to enter.

Fannin said investigators are studying everything in the cheese-making process, from dairy herds to packaging, at the now-closed plant hoping to isolate a source of the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes.

A veterinarian from the University of California at Davis was brought in to help in the investigation, which has stricken more than 90 people in Southern California and several more in other states, Fannin said. She stressed that not all the cases might be linked to eating Jalisco-brand cheese.

Meanwhile, state officials acknowledged Tuesday that a dairy foods inspector failed to file a report on sanitation conditions at the Jalisco plant for more than two months, submitting it only after health officials linked the company’s cheese to the outbreak of listeriosis.

State Food and Agriculture Department officials said in Sacramento that they were “embarrassed” to discover that their inspector failed to submit a timely inspection report last March on the Artesia facility.

Jack Pollock, the Los Angeles-based inspector, visited the plant March 21 and made notes during a walk-through, when he found only one potential contamination problem--an electrical cord left dangling over a cheese vat.

The 25-year veteran inspector submitted a report on his findings this month. The report, backdated to March 21, was rejected by his superiors because of the time that elapsed.

Pollock said Tuesday that he had been instructed not to talk to the news media.

Commenting on the backdated report, which was made public Tuesday, state Food and Agriculture officials said there was nothing that indicated a serious problem at the plant.

‘Passing Grade’

Deputy Director Hans Van Nes said there was “nothing remarkable” about sanitation problems cited in Pollock’s reconstructed report.

“They got a passing grade,” he said.

But, Van Nes said, the report should have been filed in March--not June.

“It should have been reported anyway,” he said. “There is no way to defend a person not filing a report.”

In several inspection reports filed this year, Pollock found nothing that would have justified shutting down the Jalisco facility, Van Nes said.

Pollock’s boss, Tate, said he was “very disappointed. . . . My staff and the department are embarrassed.”

A department spokesman later explained that Pollock had kept his notes from the March 21 inspection in a notebook until the listeriosis outbreak occurred and attention focused on the Jalisco plant.

The spokesman said Pollock “misunderstood” a request to look at his handwritten notes and prepared a backdated report in which he wrote that it was a “cursory inspection only.”

Pollock wrote: “No violation noted except for electrical cord hanging over cheese vat (number) 1. Was in the wrong position. Supplies power to overhead agitator assembly. Cord had a slight amount of grease on cord.”

In subsequent inspections made on June 10 and 15, after the listeriosis outbreak was being investigated, Pollock again noted that the electrical cord or cable dangling over the cheese vat was coated with a grease-like substance.

Van Nes described the greasy cord as “a much lesser violation” than a dirty vat.

“I doubt very much that that will turn out to be the cause of the Listeria problem,” Van Nes said. He admitted, however, that it was a sanitary problem that should have been fixed.

Tate said Pollock had authority to remove the cord at the time of the inspection but he did not know whether Pollock told Jalisco of the problem.

“He should have,” Tate said. “They couldn’t have ignored it.”

Tate said that if the cord was severly contaminated, it could have affected the cheese if the greasy substance dropped into the vat.

In other related developments Tuesday:

- New cases of Listeria- related illnesses were reported from a number of areas.

A 63-year old man suffering from Listeria meningitis died Tuesday, bringing to 24 the number of people in Los Angeles County who have succumbed to the ailment during the current outbreak. Seven deaths have been reported in Orange County.

Many of the victims have been infants and pregnant Latino women.

Meanwhile, a Tulare County woman who ate Jalisco cheese gave birth to a stillborn baby with the infection; Contra Costa County health inspectors were looking for a link to cheese in the death of a 3-day-old infant; Riverside reported two infant deaths, and in Texas, health officials reported that two infants had died.

- Los Angeles County health officials said they had found that 79 “mom-and-pop-type” markets were still selling Jalisco-brand cheeses. Since Thursday, officials have visited thousands of markets to see how many have not been warned of the contamination.

- State Food and Agriculture Director Clare Berryhill said he believed that checks of 27 dairies in Riverside and San Bernardino counties that supplied milk to Jalisco would likely turn up some evidence of Listeria.

“We expect to find it in the dairies, quite frankly,” Berryhill said. “Dairy (cows) carry it. Humans carry it. It’s in the feed. I’m almost positive we’ll find it there.”

- Tons of potentially contaminated cheese and dairy products from Jalisco’s processing plant were dumped at the Puente Hills Landfill.

During the next two weeks, Los Angeles County sanitation officials said, nearly 250 tons of Jalisco Mexican-style food products will be buried at the dump site overlooking the San Gabriel Valley.

“We have been assured by both state and federal health officials that the material is nontoxic and is safe for our workers to handle,” said Michael W. Selna, operations chief for the county’s Solid Waste Management Department. “We are extremely confident there is no threat either to humans, the soil or the water table.”

- The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors ordered a review of how the public warning of the cheese contamination was handled and what changes can be made to expedite the process. The recommendations are due in two weeks.

‘There Was no Delay’

The board also asked for a study of a two-stage public warning procedure that would alert the medical community and the public when a health threat may exist with certain foods before the cause of the problem is pinpointed.

The action came after board members closely questioned Department of Health Services officials about why there was a one-month lag between the time the first cases were discovered and public warnings were issued.

Fannin defended her staff, telling the supervisors that the employees did an “amazing” job of tracking down the cause of the outbreak quickly.

“There was no delay,” she said. “This was a dynamic and changing situation.”

Fannin said county health officials need to develop “proof” of a problem with particular products before they issue warnings or recalls because it “might open the county to liability.”

Health officials were considering issuing a public warning when conclusive laboratory evidence linking the disease to Jalisco cheese came in from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

“We have to be very sure . . . if we don’t we know we could destroy that manufacturer. It would be totally unfair to do this prematurely,” Fannin said.

But Supervisor Michael Antonovich said afterward that he is not entirely satisfied with the handling of the matter.

“It seems like it could have moved a little faster,” he said.

The county may, in fact, increase its liability and that of the manufacturers of contaminated products if announcements are delayed, the supervisor said.

“The legitimate need to forewarn the public of the seriousness of the situation overrides the other concerns,” he said.

- Jalisco attorney Steven Gigliotti told reporters that company owners are increasingly optimistic that the firm eventually will be cleared of any wrong-doing in the case. He pointed to the widening search for the source of the contamination to more than two dozen dairies as evidence of Jalisco’s innocence.

“With each passing day we are more confident that Jalisco will not only weather this problem, but reopen,” Gigliotti said. But the attorney said it will be “at least two months” before the plant is operational again.

Times staff writers Steven Churm and Rich Connell contributed to this article.