Panel Blames Jalisco in Listeriosis Cases

SACRAMENTO —  Jalisco Mexican Products Inc. must shoulder the blame for this year’s listeriosis epidemic in California, because the now-closed Artesia firm probably used contaminated, unpasteurized milk in its food products, a panel of federal, state and local investigators said here Friday.

Although the group said that was their “best hypothesis” after a six-hour, closed-door meeting, they could not nail down precisely how Jalisco failed to pasteurize the bacteria-laden milk.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has scheduled a meeting for Monday to determine whether enough evidence exists to file criminal charges against Jalisco and its officers.

“No filing decision has yet been made,” said district attorney’s spokesman Al Albergate.

Two representatives from the prosecutor’s office attended the meeting but did not join a news conference afterward.

Abraham Kleks, director of the federal Food and Drug Administration’s Los Angeles district office, said simply finding the deadly Listeria monocytogenes bacteria in Jalisco’s cheese products could be enough to trigger federal misdemeanor charges against the firm without pinning down a contamination source.

“The finding of the (bacteria) in the cheese in and of itself makes the company liable” under federal laws, he told the news conference. He added, however, that it could take FDA officials in Washington considerable time to make a final determination.

The 21 individuals who met in the state Agriculture Department’s fourth-floor director’s suite to sort through the voluminous and highly complex Jalisco cheese contamination evidence included Hans van Nes, the department’s deputy director; Tom Papageorge, who heads the Los Angeles County district attorney’s consumer protection unit; representatives from the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta; the FDA, and Dr. Shirley L. Fannin, associate deputy director of Los Angeles County’s Communicable Disease Control agency.

Their investigation began last June, when the deadly bacteria was discovered in Jalisco-brand Mexican-style soft cheeses. The epidemic, which was not declared over until the end of July, directly claimed 39 lives, according to figures compiled by the state Department of Health Services, and caused about 100 other cases of the illness.

At Friday’s news conference, Van Nes put the blame on Jalisco but also said the state was looking closely at Jalisco’s milk supplier--Alta-Dena Certified Dairy--because state inspectors found the same Listeria 4B bacteria strain in an isolated instance at the dairy’s City of Industry plant.

“We are saying that Jalisco was wrong and had Jalisco done their job right, we would not be here today,” Van Nes said. “We know that for sure . . . something went wrong in that plant. It didn’t go wrong in other plants that make this kind of cheese. It went wrong there.”

Van Nes said Jalisco’s pasteurization process was either “faulty” or the firm bypassed the pasteurizer altogether. The pasteurization equipment itself was all right, he added.

Although the same 4B bacteria strain was discovered in a container of a milk ingredient at the Alta-Dena plant, Van Nes noted “no one” at the meeting sought to ban Alta-Dena sales of raw, or unpasteurized milk to the public. He emphasized that the Listeria 4B bacteria strain has not been found in Alta-Dena’s raw milk, only in the milk ingredient.

Nevertheless, he said, the Agriculture Department has stepped up its efforts to check California’s production of raw milk marketed to the public.

Alta-Dena President Harold Stueve said Friday that the dairy will continue raw milk marketing, although it amounts to only a fraction of its milk production.

“It’s the principle of when you’re right, you need to stand up for it,” he said.

Stueve on Thursday accused Dr. Michael Linnan, the Centers for Disease Control epidemiologist who helped lead the Jalisco investigation, of planting the Listeria bacteria in his plant as part of a conspiracy to shut down raw milk production.

“I’m very proud to be on Stueve’s hit list,” Linnan said Friday.