This story has been updated. See below.
After recalling hundreds of thousands of pounds of its products, CRF Frozen Foods is working to reopen its processing plant in Pasco, Wash.
The company has yet to discover what actually caused the massive outbreak, though CRF consultant Gene Grabowski told the Tri-City Herald that it will be shifting its focus from trying to find the source to receiving the necessary approvals to restart production. CRF still needs authorization from the FDA before it can begin operating again.
CRF Frozen Foods was connected to eight patients with Listeria-related illnesses, two of whom died. The company ended up recalling over 350 frozen food products that were sold under 42 different brand names at various retailers, including Trader Joe’s and Costco. The company subsequently laid off 300 employees at its Pasco facility.
It’s not unusual for the source of a Listeria outbreak to go unfound. The pathogen is quite common and it doesn’t take much to affect a consumer. “You don’t have to have a filthy, dirty, horrible plant to have Listeria,” Bill Marler, managing partner at Seattle law firm Marler Clarke, which specializes in food safety, told the Herald. “The cleanest plant in the world can be harboring Listeria.” Though Fortune previously reported that wasn’t the case at the Pasco facility.
Though the company is working towards reopening the plant, Grabowski tells Fortune that it’s a “long, meticulous process,” and even though CRF is hopeful, “there is no timetable and we don’t expect to re-open it anytime soon.” It’s a long process that involves sanitizing, testing, and ordering new equipment, all at the company’s expense. It could end up costing tens of millions of dollars, which Marler told the Herald “could be enough to sink any company.”
An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Gene Grabowski told the Herald that the costs associated with this recall “could be enough to sink any company”; it was actually Bill Marler who made that statement. The earlier version also stated that CRF Frozen Foods is waiting on approval from the USDA, not the FDA.
