During the summer of 2024, dozens of deadly listeria cases popped up across the United States. This raised fears and red flags for epidemiologists, and sparked a race to uncover the source and prevent more deaths and infections. Piecing together clues provided by hospitalized patients, the CDC and local health departments began to suspect the culprit was Boar’s Head liverwurst. To verify, scientists purchased an unopened tube of the lunchmeat at a local grocery store and blended it into a “liverwurst smoothie” to ensure that the entire sample was tested. Bingo: the samples showed live, infectious listeria.

The contaminated food was traced back to a deli meat plant in Jarratt, VA. The Boar’s Head brand immediately recalled liverwurst and nine other products from the plant. Within a week the company recalled more than 70 other products. This totaled more than 7 million additional pounds of meat, including ham, bologna, bacon, and hot dogs. All had been processed in the same factory in Jarratt. In addition to the listeria contamination, U.S. Department of Agriculture inspections of the Jarratt plant revealed a lengthy (and impressively egregious) list of unhygienic conditions, including spoiled meat-covered work surfaces, black mold, insects, standing water, and “heavy, discolored meat buildup” on many pieces of equipment.

In the aftermath, Boar’s Head has indefinitely closed the Jarratt plant and discontinued their liverwurst product. They also implemented enhanced food safety and quality assurance practices. These included appointing a new Chief of Food Safety and establishing the Boar’s Head Food Safety Council.

But that’s all little comfort to the hundreds, if not thousands, of people harmed, including the families of the 10 people who lost their lives to this outbreak.

How did this happen? And how can we prevent future—and potentially even worse—contamination within the food supply chain?

Clean, Reliable Sample Testing is Key

Dr. Gary Niehaus, a pathogen detection technology specialist, worries that we have become complacent. “I think most people don’t think about it. They assume their food is safe” if it’s sealed in plastic and sitting in a cold-case.

But even if we had perfect food handling and testing regimens, human error—and human nature—will always lead to variability in food processing and contamination detection. That’s why it’s so important to make sure food producers and processors have everything they need to be sure that their internal quality assurance departments can do the best work possible. When speed and accuracy are of the essence, lab conditions and equipment must be reliably sterile.

Breweries, dairies, meat processing plants, and many other food and beverage facilities rely on research-grade Priorclave autoclaves in their quality assurance departments. For example, the Pilgrim’s Pride chicken processing facility in Pittsburg, TX, is the largest chicken supplier in the United States. Its quality assurance department was having trouble keeping up with a heavy workload using a medical-grade tabletop sterilizer. Daily waste processing and media prep cycles proved to be too much for the machine, which was not designed to accommodate such heavy usage. Their lab techs frequently struggled with frustrating—and dangerous—machine downtime.

Pilgrim’s Pride was able to solve their equipment reliability and safety issues by switching to a research-grade Priorclave 60L benchtop autoclave. Even as the workload increased, the Priorclave machine kept pace, running into fewer problems and requiring far less maintenance.

Ensure Safe and Healthy Protocols With Priorclave

What methods will you pursue to keep the food and beverage supply safe? Priorclave has long advocated for proactive food safety and quality assurance at the producer and processor level. Otherwise, as was the case with Boar’s Head, it’s the public at large who end up serving as lab rats and QA department rolled into one.

Equipping and running a good, clean quality control department can be tricky. Feel free to reach out anytime to speak with our experts, and get answers to all your questions. We’re always happy to help labs spec their equipment and establish good sterilization practices.