Egg Company Execs Get Prison Time for Role in Salmonella Outbreak
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iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — The owner of an Iowa egg company and his son were sentenced to three months in prison Monday in connection with a salmonella outbreak in 2010 that sickened thousands and triggered a huge recall, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Austin “Jack” DeCoster, the owner of Quality Egg LLC, and his son Peter DeCoster had pleaded guilty last year to one misdemeanor count of selling contaminated food products across state lines.
In 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had traced close to two thousand illnesses to contaminated eggs from Iowa, but indicated that more than 56,000 people may have fallen ill.
Quality Egg, known back in 2010 as the Wright County Egg Company, and a second Iowa farm together recalled more than 500 million eggs.
The Journal reports Quality Egg was once one of the country’s largest egg producers, but is no longer active. The company pleaded guilty last year to three counts, including bribery of a public official. On Monday, it was fined $6.8 million and placed on three years’ probation.
The case against the Iowa egg company is just the latest effort by federal prosecutors to obtain criminal convictions of executives at companies linked to contaminated food products. In 2014, the former head of a Georgia peanut-processing firm was found guilty of felony charges in connection to a deadly salmonella incident.
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