Washington - Hudson Foods Inc. and two of its former employees were indicted in Nebraska on charges of lying to the U.S. Agriculture Department, delaying a record recall of 25 million pounds of hamburger last year, the USDA said.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Nebraska charged the company and the employees with “making false statements and conspiring to provide false and misleading information to USDA concerning the production and distribution of Hudson ground beef,” the Agriculture Department said.
“These misrepresentations resulted in a delay in the identification of potentially contaminated product, thus increasing the threat to consumers,” the department said.
A month after 15 people in Colorado became sick from eating meat potentially contaminated with a deadly strain of E.coli bacteria in July 1997, the company conducted the largest recall in history. It also shut down its Columbus, Neb., facility, which was found to be the source of the meat.
Soon after the recall -- the largest involving hamburger in U.S. history -- Hudson was bought by two leading meat companies, Tyson Foods Inc. and IBP Inc. (NYSE:IBP - news) . IBP took over ownership of the Columbus plant after it bought Hudson, an attorney for Hudson said. Hudson is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Tyson.
“I am bitterly disappointed,” said James “Red” Hudson, former chairman of the board at Hudson, in a statement. “I remain convinced that Hudson Foods and all its employees acted properly and honorably in handling the recall,” Hudson said. “No one, at the USDA or anywhere else, was more concerned than Hudson Foods and its people with the wholesomeness of our product and the safety of our customers.
“The overreaction of the USDA in Washington in this incident destroyed my company's good name, and led to the demise of Hudson Foods Inc. as it existed at the time.”
Michael Gregory, who was Hudson's national quality control manager and recall coordinator at the Rogers, Ark.-based company, and Brent Wolke, manager of the Columbus plant, mislead investigators who were trying to determine the source of the E.coli, the Agriculture Department said.
“We want everyone to understand that the health and safety of the public are more important than the corporate bottom line,” Inspector General Roger Viadero said in a statement.
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