The deadly listeria outbreak that prompted Boar’s Head to indefinitely shut down a contaminated plant has devastated a Virginia town after 500 workers suddenly found themselves out of a job, according to a report.
The tiny town of Jarratt, located 60 miles south of Richmond, is bearing the brunt of the brand’s decision to discontinue its popular liverwurst product after it was linked to the deaths of at least nine people and the hospitalizations of 50 others in 18 states.
The indefinite closure, announced last week, came after health inspectors recorded dozens of disturbing violations at the facility, including the presence of bugs, pools of blood on the floor and mold inside the equipment.
The town has just 600 residents — and businesses that relied on the workers are already feeling the financial fallout, several locals said.
“We can’t fix cars if they ain’t got no money,” Mike Wilkens, a 63-year-old mechanic in Jarratt, told The Washington Post.
“We worked on them folks’ cars. Everybody’s got to get a job, otherwise it’ll be a ghost town with everybody riding a horse and buggy.”
One former plant worker, a single mother with four young children, told the paper that she was worried about how she would be able to pay her rent, water and electric bills.
“It was a good job,” the unidentified woman, who immigrated to the United States from Mexico, told The Washington Post.
Boar’s Head, a family-run company based in Sarasota, Fla., said it conducted an internal investigation at the plant which found that the contamination was the result of a specific production process.
The process only existed at the Jarratt plant and was only used for liverwurst, the company said.
It has not provided a timetable for a possible reopening, leaving workers and residents in a lurch.
Traci Morris, a nurse manager at a state prison nearby, told the paper: “It’s going to be a big hit because it’s a huge employer.”
“We’ve got all highways, major shipping points, but we ain’t got nothing here,” added 75-year-old Roy Key, a resident of Jarratt.
“We ain’t got nothing but farmers, and they don’t employ a lot of people now, because … it’s a lot of automated equipment.”
Production at the Jarratt plant was halted in July, when Boar’s Head recalled more than 7 million pounds of deli meats and other products after tests confirmed its listeria-tainted products were making people sick.
The Agriculture Department issued several citations over the past year for health and safety violations at the plant, such as having “dirty” machinery.
Government inspectors also found flies in pickle containers and “heavy meat buildup” on walls.