Health Law

USDA Orders Chicken Plant Closed

By Dan Flynn and Suzanna Schreck

This week, federal regulators ordered Murray's Chicken to cease processing at its South Fallsburg, NY poultry plant.

Steve Gold, Murray's vice president of sales and marketing, said the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service allowed the company to ship chicken packaged Monday but ordered it otherwise closed until it corrects "facility issues."

"It has nothing to do with the food safety of the product," said Gold. "We're doing everything we can to make sure our employees get back to work," reported the Record Online.

Neither Gold nor Brian Mabry, an FSIS spokesman, would identify the specific issues causing the shutdown, but Mabry said FSIS' concerns are directly related to food safety.

Mabry said the agency sent Murray's a written warning in January concerning "[S]almonella controls." The concerns centered on Murray's ability to identify and minimize contamination by pathogens such as Salmonella.

FSIS also issued a notice in April about sanitation concerns and noncompliance with FSIS regulations, said Mabry. Following the April notice, the agency issued another notice Monday telling Murray to suspend operations.

"While FSIS is sympathetic to the economic implications of the suspension, our primary concern is to fulfill our regulatory responsibility to protect the public health," said Mabry.

Gold said he was not aware of any FSIS issues with food contamination. The company frequently tests on its own and just passed a USDA test for Salmonella on July 23, he said.

"Either you pass or you fail," he said. "We passed."

Gold said Murray's has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars addressing ongoing FSIS complaints about its aging plant. Because of that effort, owner Murray Bresky and company officials were shocked when they received the shutdown notice, he said.

"For some reason, it came to a head yesterday," he said.

Murray's 350 employees process about 35,000 chickens a day at the South Fallsburg plant.

Fallsburg Supervisor Steve Vegliante is confident the plant will reopen shortly. "I fed my children Murray's chicken on Monday night, and will continue to do so," he said.

Full post as published by Food Safety News on July 31, 2010 (boomark / email).