Garbage Plant or Meat Warehouse?
After reading a story by Courthouse News about filthy conditions inside a Fort Worth, Texas, meat warehouse, you wonder if it was really just a garbage plant that contained animal flesh.
The discovery of conditions inside Halal Import Food Market’s warehouse happened after a Texas state trooper found 148 goat carcasses stacked inside Halal Import Food Market’s unrefrigerated van and ordered it to Halal’s warehouse to be inspected. En route, 102 dead goats and boxes of organs went missing.
According to a lawsuit filed by the State of Texas in Tarrant County Court, the state believes two supermarkets received the meats. The entire story is a food safety nightmare.
Again from Courthouse News, here’s how the complaint describes Halal’s warehouse: Filthy, with “dead birds and bird droppings on food products … live birds flying around warehouse and resting on food products,” trash piled 6 feet deep in places, “numerous dead rodents, numerous rodent droppings along with gnawed materials and debris,” meat rotting on a grinder, “various uncovered and exposed foods in direct contact with wet floor along with debris and trash in produce/dairy cooler,” and “cigarette butts, rotting fruit, peels, partially eaten chicken and other food” around the warehouse. The goat carcasses bore no stamps showing that they were from inspected sourced, and the carcasses in the van were touching “seat belts, peeling and fraying fabric overhead from van ceiling, and a rusty van floor.”
The story said Halal Import Food Market has been cited for food safety violations since 2001. Texas wants the contaminated food destroyed and fines of up to $25,000 per day from each defendant for each violation of safety regulations.
Er, isn’t this enough to shut the place down?
Tags: food poisoning
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