LOS ANGELES
A consultant, who worked for the now-closed Hunting Meat Packing Company, admitted that he falsely certified beef being sold by his employer was free of E. coli bacteria, federal officials said.
Jim Johnson, 67, plead guilty to the felony offense this week to making and using a false writing and document, officials said.
Johnson will be sentenced in March and is facing up to five years behind bars, according to officials.
“The defendant’s lie created a public health hazard, and such conduct will not be tolerated,” said U.S. Attorney Eileen M. Decker. “The public is entitled to have confidence in the food that makes it to its tables. The Department of Justice will continue to prosecute aggressively those whose conduct undermines that confidence.”
Huntington Meat was a Montebello-based meat processing and distribution company that sold raw ground beef that was used by other companies to make products such as beef patties and burrito mix.
Under a food safety plan approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Huntington Meat was required to test its meat for the Escherichia coli 0157:H7 bacterium.
In his plea agreement, Johnson admitted that in 2010 he provided the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service with a fake Certificate of Analysis which falsely stated that a beef sample from the company had tested negative for E. coli.
Subsequent lab results showed that some of this meat was contaminated with E. coli. – which prompted the Food Safety Inspection to issue recall 864,000 pounds of meat
There were no illnesses linked to the recalled beef.