According to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Chicago, Illinois, the five-count indictment charges three LaGrou executives with storing more than 22 million pounds of adulterated meat, poultry and other food products in unsanitary, rodent-infested conditions. FDA officials called it one of the largest stockpiles of rodent-adulterated food products ever discovered in the United States.
In an inspection carried out over a year ago, federal, state and City of Chicago health officials also found 10 million pounds of pounds of FDA-regulated fish, nuts, butter and milk fat, valued at approximately $10,000,000, in unsanitary conditions. These products were seized together with the adulterated meat and poultry.
Charged with criminal conspiracy to violate federal public health standards were La Grou's President and chief Executive Officer, Director of Sales and a former warehouse manager.
Officials stressed that while there had been no reports of illnesses caused by the seized products, and they posed no immediate public health risk, no food products have been allowed in or out of the facility since the seizure without government authorization.
About "The Jungle"
Written by Upton Sinclair in 1906, "The Jungle" presented a scathing expose of unsafe and unsanitary conditions in the American meatpacking industry of the day. The public outcry in reaction to "The Jungle" helped prompt Congress to pass the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food & Drug Act, which eventually resulted in the creation of the USDA and Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
"All day long the rivers of hot blood poured forth, until, with the sun beating down, and the air motionless, the stench was enough to knock a man over; all the old smells of a generation would be drawn out by this heat – for there was never any washing of the walls and rafters and pillars, and they were caked with the filth of a lifetime. The men who worked on the killing beds would come to reek with foulness, so that you could smell one of them fifty feet away; there was simply no such thing as keeping decent, the most careful man gave it up in the end, and wallowed in uncleanness. There was not even a place where a man could wash his hands, and the men ate as much raw blood as food at dinnertime." (from 'The Jungle')
