Jalisco Can’t Make Payroll, Gives Notice to 100 Workers

Jalisco Mexican Products Inc., which voluntarily stopped selling its dairy products a week ago in the wake of mounting deaths and illnesses attributed to bacteria found in its cheeses, announced Wednesday it would temporarily lay off about 100 employees.

The move came after company President Gary McPherson said Jalisco was unable to secure continued funding from its bank to meet its payroll. He did not identify the bank but said Jalisco hopes to find other temporary jobs and benefits for the workers.

McPherson said the company was reviewing its financial situation and hoped to notify employees about their pay and other benefits as quickly as possible. He also said the company would share whatever money it may have on hand Friday with its employees, many of whom are said by workers to be illegal aliens.

The cutoff of payroll funds raised a question of whether Jalisco, apparently battered financially, would be able to pay for the massive recall of its products.

Jill Dominique, a spokeswoman for the public relations firm hired by Jalisco, had no comment when asked if the company would leave the cost of paying for the recall to distributors or state and county governments. She said Jalisco was reviewing its financial situation.

The company voluntarily shut down its Artesia processing plant last Thursday and began recalling its products across the nation. State inspectors have been scouring the plant looking for a source of the bacteria but, so far, to no avail. They also have gone to 27 dairies in Riverside and San Bernardino counties that supplied milk to the plant to see if the herds might have the infection.

As the search continued, the death toll--as reported by local health officials--rose to 35 in California. Texas reported two deaths linked to Jalisco-made cheese. There have been reports of other listeriosis deaths, but they have not yet been definitely linked to the suspect cheese.

In Riverside County, the mother of a 4-day-old boy who died from the ailment April 27 told health investigators she had eaten the cheese.

“We inquired of the mother, and she admitted to eating Jalisco cheese during pregnancy,” said Manzoor Massey, director of health education at the Riverside County Health Department. “She recalled a brief . . . diarrheal illness one month prior to the birth.”

In Fort Worth, health officials said they found leftover Jimenez brand queso fresco cheese in the refrigerator of an 83-year-old woman who died at a hospital Wednesday. Jimenez is one of four brands of cheese manufactured by Jalisco. However, test results were still being conducted on the cheese.

In the other case, authorities said a 28-year-old Houston woman who had eaten the cheese throughout her pregnancy gave birth to a stillborn infant.

On another front, the first in what is expected to become a flurry of lawsuits against Jalisco was filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The suit, filed by San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli, seeks $2 million in damages on behalf of a young couple whose 2-day-old child died April 12 at University of California, Irvine, Medical Center in Orange.

Belli said he plans to file about 15 more wrongful-death suits before the weekend, both in Los Angeles and Orange counties, involving children whose deaths have been linked to the contaminated cheese.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday claims that the infant’s mother, Maria Eugenia de la Luz, ate Jalisco cheese containing Listeria monocytogenes and that the baby girl died as a result.

Concerned over the publicity linking contaminated cheese with deaths and illnesses, Jalisco has hired the nation’s largest public relations firm--Burson-Marsteller.

The New York-based firm helped Johnson & Johnson restore its image after the Tylenol poisoning scare in 1982, when several people died after taking Tylenol that had been laced with cyanide.

Last year, Union Carbide Corp. hired Burson-Marsteller in a bid to offset a loss of public faith after the gas leak tragedy in Bhopal, India, that killed more than 2,000 people.

In other developments Wednesday, state Department of Food and Agriculture inspectors began dye testing on milk storage tanks, cheese vats and other equipment at the Artesia processing plant to determine if there are any open seams where seepage could occur.

Samples were also being taken from recalled cheese as it was brought to the Jalisco plant. Another truckload of cheese was driven from the plant to the Puente Hills landfill, where 38,000 pounds of cheese was dumped Tuesday.

State Department of Food and Agriculture spokeswoman Jan Wessell said the investigation was continuing into whether unlicensed workers ever operated the plant’s pasteurizing equipment. Only one employee was licensed to run the equipment.

“We’re questioning them and looking at the paper work to see if anyone who had not been licensed was operating the equipment during pasteurization,” Wessell said.