On February 13, 2025, Boar’s Head designated a companywide Boar’s Head Food Safety Promise Day, pausing normal operations so that its employees could focus on the company’s new food safety and sanitation controls. Boar’s Head Food Safety Promise Day and Boar’s Head’s newly implemented protocols are the result of a 2024 listeriosis outbreak linked to the company’s deli meat products that sickened 61 people in 19 states and caused ten deaths.
In an announcement to its customers, Boar’s Head highlighted its new safety and sanitation controls and processes:
- The establishment of an independent Food Safety Advisory Council
- Upgrading to processes that provide additional layers of protection as part of a transition to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Alternative 2 Listeria Control Requirements, now using high-pressure pasteurization, water pasteurization, and, in some cases, natural additives to inhibit pathogen growth
- Increasing Listeria sampling across all facilities
- Providing third-party training to sanitation personnel, and strengthening daily cleaning and sanitation procedures
- Retraining team members at all facilities on updated food safety procedures and protocols
- Promoting food safety culture.
During the 2024 listeriosis outbreak linked to Boar’s Head products, USDA inspection reports uncovered a history of serious food safety and hygiene noncompliances at the company’s Jarratt, Virginia plant, where the meats implicated in the outbreak were produced. The outbreak led to questioning from USDA and Congressmembers about the company’s use of Alternative 3 Listeria controls, why unsatisfactory conditions were allowed to persist at the Jarratt facility, and what the company planned to do to prevent future outbreaks.
Additionally, an internal investigation was launched at USDA into the agency’s handling of the repeated sanitary violations found at the Jarratt plant, which resulted in changes to the USDA Listeria rule and state-federal cooperative inspection agreements, as well as long-term measures to review and modernize its ready-to-eat (RTE) sampling programs.
