Paper Says Sara Lee Knew of Tainted Meat

Federal investigators were told that managers at a Sara Lee Corp. plant in Michigan knowingly shipped tainted meat that was linked to an outbreak of an illness that killed 15 people, a Detroit newspaper reported.

The government later reached an agreement that stressed that the company did not know the meat was tainted.

The bacteria were found in hot dogs and deli meat in 1998 at Sara Lee’s Bil Mar Foods facility near Grand Rapids. The company recalled 15 million pounds of hot dogs and lunch meat that December. The tainted meat also was blamed for causing six miscarriages and seriously sickening 80 people.

The investigators’ report obtained by the Detroit Free Press cites one employee who claimed to have known with “virtual certainty” that meat produced by the plant contained Listeria monocytogenes and that management had “a similar level of awareness.”

It also says a federal meat inspector told investigators that Bil Mar managers were aware of increased levels of listeria about eight months before the nationwide listeriosis outbreak.

In June, federal prosecutors reached an agreement that stressed that Bil Mar didn’t knowingly distribute meat containing listeria. Sara Lee pleaded guilty in federal court to a misdemeanor charge that it prepared and sold “adulterated poultry and meat products.”