Kerry Inc.
Outcome
Kerry Inc. pleaded guilty on February 3, 2023 to manufacturing Kellogg's Honey Smacks cereal under insanitary conditions at its Gridley, Illinois facility and agreed to pay $19.228 million — the largest-ever criminal penalty following a criminal conviction in a U.S. food safety case — after its facility produced 81 positive Salmonella environmental test results between 2016 and 2018 and caused a multistate outbreak that sickened at least 135 people in 36 states.
Details
Kerry Inc. — Honey Smacks Salmonella / Record $19.2 Million Criminal Fine (2016–2023)
Outcome: Kerry Inc. pleaded guilty on February 3, 2023, to manufacturing Kellogg's Honey Smacks cereal under insanitary conditions and agreed to pay $19.228 million — the largest-ever criminal penalty following a criminal conviction in a U.S. food safety case — after its Gridley, Illinois facility generated 81 positive Salmonella environmental test results between June 2016 and June 2018 and caused a multistate outbreak sickening at least 135 people in 36 states.
Kerry Inc. operated a cereal manufacturing facility in Gridley, Illinois where it produced Kellogg's Honey Smacks breakfast cereal under a co-manufacturing agreement with Kellogg's. As part of its food safety program, Kerry ran an environmental monitoring program to test the plant environment for Salmonella. Between June 2016 and June 2018, the program detected Salmonella in the environment at the Gridley facility approximately 81 times, including at least one positive Salmonella sample in every single month during that entire two-year period. Despite these pervasive and continuous results, the facility continued to manufacture and ship cereal.
In June 2018, the FDA and CDC announced an ongoing multistate outbreak of salmonellosis linked to Kellogg's Honey Smacks cereal produced at Kerry's Gridley facility. The CDC ultimately identified more than 135 cases of salmonellosis across 36 states, with illness onset dates beginning in March 2018 and 34 hospitalizations. Kellogg's issued a voluntary recall of Honey Smacks cereal. No deaths were attributed to the outbreak.
Kerry Inc. pleaded guilty on February 3, 2023, to a misdemeanor count of distributing adulterated cereal under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The agreed criminal fine and forfeiture totaled $19.228 million. A former Kerry Inc. facility manager also pleaded guilty in connection with the same events. The DOJ described the $19.228 million as the largest-ever criminal penalty following a criminal conviction in a food safety case, surpassing the previous record set by Chipotle in 2020.
How Crucible Prevents This
An environmental monitoring positive-result escalation protocol — requiring immediate corrective action when Salmonella is detected in the plant environment — is the single most critical Crucible control that would have interrupted this pattern; 81 positives over two years with no line shutdown is a compliance system failure. A Salmonella-positive product release gate, blocking any product batch from shipping until a follow-up clean environmental test is confirmed, is a direct Crucible control. A monthly positive-test trend report reviewed by facility management and corporate compliance is a Crucible monitoring control that would have surfaced the pattern before an outbreak occurred.
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