A 60 year old woman, acting as a meat company's quality control officer, is now facing up to 5 years in prison for assisting the company's owner in falsifying E. coli test results. The owner of New England Meat Company agreed to a plea deal in August where he admitted that the test results were fake.
http://www.courant.com/breaking-news/hc-br-stafford-springs-guilty-fake-e-coli-tests-20190923-h7o7nmqnmvbftfdcid3j7stf4a-story.html
Stafford Springs meat packing plant employee pleads guilty to faking E. coli test results
By Zach Murdock
Hartford Courant |
Sep 23, 2019 | 5:14 PM The quality control officer at a Stafford Springs meat packing plant pleaded guilty Monday to falsifying dozens of required E. coli test results for almost a year.
Debbie L. Smith, 60, waived her right to be indicted and pleaded guilty in Hartford federal court on Monday, the U.S. attorney's office announced Monday afternoon.
Despite the fraudulent tests, there are no known reports of illnesses reported by anyone who consumed meat distributed by the plant during that time, prosecutors said.
Smith worked at the New England Meat Packing plant where workers process, sell and transport meat for human consumption and prepared the company's lab sample reports used by the federal Food Safety Inspection Service to determine whether the food was safe, prosecutors said.
The company is required to complete generic E. coli tests for every 300 animals slaughtered and must periodically collect ground beef samples for further E. coli tests, which Smith documented in a binder reviewed by food safety inspectors, prosecutors said.
From November 2016 to September 2017, Smith compiled 36 documents related to 52 separate swab and ground beef samples that all purported to show the samples tested negative for E. coli, prosecutors said.
Despite appearing on the letterhead of a certified laboratory and bearing the lab director's signature, those tests never occurred, according to court documents. The reports were prepared fraudulently based on the letterheads the packing plant had obtained from previous tests with the lab, prosecutors said.
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New England Meat Packing owner Memet Bequiri admitted he signed off the scheme to submit the fake test results and told investigators "he did not correlate the potential impact on food safety" when they skipped the tests, prosecutors said.
Beqiri pleaded guilty last month to making and using a false document and aiding and abetting and has not yet been sentenced, prosecutors said.
Smith faces up to five years in prison on the single count of making and using a false document. She has been released on bond pending sentencing on Dec. 10.
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