Sara Lee Pleads Guilty in Meat Case

Sara Lee Corp. pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor Friday and agreed to pay $4.4 million for selling tainted meat blamed for at least 15 deaths and six miscarriages around the country in 1998.

The agreement reached with federal prosecutors stresses that Sara Lee’s Bil Mar Foods division did not knowingly distribute the bad meat.

Bil Mar recalled 15 million pounds of hot dogs and lunch meat after its plant in Borculo, Mich., about 20 miles from Grand Rapids, was linked to an outbreak of the bacterial illness listeriosis. In addition to the deaths, 80 people fell seriously ill.

Chicago-based Sara Lee will pay the maximum fine of $200,000 and spend $3 million on food-safety research at Michigan State University. The company also will pay $1.2 million to settle a lawsuit about meat sold to the Pentagon.

“We are pleased that this situation is now behind us,” said Steve McMillan, Sara Lee’s chief executive and president. “We believe that the collective industry response has created a much safer environment that will benefit greatly by the significant research and food-safety initiatives Sara Lee has implemented over the last two years.”

Since the outbreak, Sara Lee has spent $25 million to renovate the Bil Mar plant, started a new listeria-testing system and installed $3.3 million worth of sanitation equipment, Sara Lee attorney Anton Valukas said. The company also has given $1 million to Georgetown University for food-safety research.

Listeria monocytogenes is a bacterium that leads to listeriosis, a disease that often sickens the elderly and pregnant women but also can attack younger people with weak immune systems.

Sara Lee has settled at least two lawsuits filed by people who were sickened and the relatives of those who died.

Terms of those settlements were not disclosed.

The company also last year settled class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of thousands of people who claimed they got sick. Payments ranged from $250 to $50,000 per plaintiff, plus medical expenses. Sara Lee officials have said the total is not expected to exceed $5 million.

Food-safety advocate Carol Tucker Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America in Washington said criminal charges are rare against large meat companies.

Last year, she said, fewer than 20 of the nation’s 6,000 meat plants were charged and pleaded guilty to violating meat-inspection regulations, and all were smaller plants, she said.

Sara Lee shares were down 6 cents at $19.11 in New York Stock Exchange trading.