A former Kerry Inc. quality assurance executive pleaded guilty to not reporting food safety conditions at a Kerry contract manufacturing plant that led to a salmonella outbreak from Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal, sickening 130 people nationwide.
Ravi Kumar Chermala was director of quality assurance for Kerry Inc., overseeing sanitation programs at several Kerry manufacturing plants, including a facility in Gridley, Ill., that manufactured Honey Smacks breakfast cereal for Kellogg Co.
In pleading guilty, he admitted that between June 2016 and June 2018, he directed subordinates not to report certain information to Kellogg about conditions at the facility. In addition, Chermala said he directed subordinates to alter the plant’s program for monitoring for the presence of pathogens in the plant, limiting the facility’s ability to accurately detect insanitary conditions, according to U.S. Dept. of Justice records.
In June 2018, the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) linked an ongoing outbreak of salmonellosis cases to Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal produced at the Gridley facility. In response, Kellogg voluntarily recalled all Honey Smacks cereal manufactured at the plant since June 2017.
The CDC eventually identified more than 130 cases of salmonellosis linked to the outbreak with illness onset dates beginning in March 2018, but no deaths were related to the outbreak.
Chermala pleaded guilty in late October to three misdemeanor counts of causing the introduction of adulterated food into interstate commerce. Sentencing is expected in January.
