Virginia Boar’s Head plant closing amid deadly multistate listeria outbreak

A Boar’s Head plant in Virginia is shutting down amid a multistate listeria outbreak that has claimed the lives of at least nine people and sickened dozens of others, the company announced Friday.

Fifty-seven people across 18 states — including New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania — have been infected with Listeria monocytogenes since late May, when the Centers for Disease Control announced the outbreak’s first case.

The ongoing health emergency first came to light after a sample of Boar’s Head liverwurst from a Maryland store tested positive for the bacteria. It’s now the nation’s largest listeriosis outbreak since 2011, when 33 people died from eating contaminated cantaloupes.

An internal investigation concluded that the “root cause” of the contamination was linked to a production process used for liverwurst that only existed at the facility in Jarratt, Va.

“Given the seriousness of the outbreak, and the fact that it originated at Jarratt, we have made the difficult decision to indefinitely close this location,” the company said Friday in a statement, noting the plant hadn’t been operational since late July.

“It pains us to impact the livelihoods of hundreds of hard-working employees … but under these circumstances, we feel that a plant closure is the most prudent course,” the statement added.

The production of liverwurst has also been permanently discontinued, the company said.

The announcement comes just weeks after documents released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture revealed that food inspectors had found 69 violations at Jarratt plant — including the presence of bugs and substances that “appeared to be black mold and mildew” — within the past year.

Calling the recent outbreak and its aftermath a “dark moment in our company’s history,” Boar’s Head said Friday that it would not take lightly its responsibility as one of “the area’s largest employers,” adding it would help affected employees in their “transition process.”

The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 Union, which represents employees at the Jarratt plant, lamented the “unprecedented tragedy” that has put people out of work.

But in a statement shared on its website, the union said it had reached an agreement with the company that would “provide our members with the opportunity to transfer to other Boar’s Head facilities or to accept a severance package well above and beyond what is required under the law.