Family Dollar ordered to pay over $40m for rodent-infested Arkansas warehouse
Family Dollar Stores has been ordered to pay $41.675m – the largest criminal penalty in a food safety case – after getting caught using a rodent-infested warehouse to distribute food, cosmetic and medical device products to more than 400 stores in the US.
After conducting an investigation, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) discovered “live rodents, dead and decaying rodents, rodent feces, urine, and odors, and evidence of gnawing and nesting”, according to a statement released by the US Department of Justice.
In a federal court hearing in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Monday, Family Dollar pleaded guilty to using their distribution center located in West Memphis, Arkansas, to ship products to hundreds of stores across Alabama, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee.
Family Dollar has more than 8,000 stores in all states except Alaska and Hawaii.
The company began receiving complaints from some of its stores about issues with mice and other pests – including receiving rodents and rodentdamaged products from the warehouse – in August 2020. By January 2021, Family Dollar admitted it was aware of the unsanitary conditions of the warehouse which caused products there to be in violation of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA).
The following year, in January 2022, the extent of the unsanitary conditions of the warehouse was revealed after an FDA inspection, which found the presence of live, dead and decaying rodents along with feces, urine and other odors, as well as evidence of gnawing and nesting throughout the building.
Subsequent fumigation of the building exterminated 1,270 rodents.
Despite the brand’s awareness of the complaints from its stores, Family Dollar continued shipping products from the infested warehouse to its stores.
The plea agreement requires Family Dollar and former rival Dollar Tree, which became the same company under the name Dollar Tree Inc in 2015, to give reports and meet “robust corporate compliance” over the next three years.
“When consumers go to the store, they have the right to expect that the food and drugs on the shelves have been kept in clean, uncontaminated conditions,” said the Department of Justice’s acting associate attorney general Benjamin C Mizer.
“When companies violate that trust and the laws designed to keep consumers safe, the public should rest assured: the justice department will hold those companies accountable.”
In a statement shared by Dollar
Tree Inc on Monday, the organization disclosed various “enhancements to strengthen safety and compliance” that it has developed in the wake of this penalty. Those enhancements include “new compliance and safety roles, hiring experienced personnel to strengthen the Company’s practices” and new “risk-based procedures and controls”. The company also said that each of its “distribution centers has passed an independent, third-party audit and became ‘Good Distribution Practices’ (‘GDP’) certified, with all distribution centers planning to maintain the distinguished certification”.
Dollar Tree’s chairman and CEO, Rick Dreiling, said in the statement that he was “very disappointed to learn about these unacceptable issues at one of Family Dollar’s facilities” when he joined the company in March 2022.
“Since that time and even more directly when I assumed the role of CEO, we have worked diligently to help Family Dollar resolve this historical matter and significantly enhance our policies, procedures, and physical facilities to ensure it is not repeated,” he said.
Family Dollar did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
giving in to them,” Graham said.
Instead of forming a non-profit, the working group proposed that Indiana University accept an “accounting solution” to route state dollars away from the institute.
Although the university administration has hosted listening sessions about what to do with the institute, Graham believes that administrators have repeatedly dodged the questions of Kinsey Institute faculty and staff.
“There’s a huge lack of transparency here,” Graham said. “We feel very powerless.”
In a statement, Shrivastav thanked the working group for its recommendations and recognized the “spread of misinformation that impugns the integrity and character of our colleagues”.
“The board of trustees will consider the feedback from the working group as the university determines a path forward,” Shrivastav said. “I want to emphasize that everyone involved in this process seeks to protect and promote the work of the Kinsey Institute – in perpetuity at IU.”
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An entirely differentthreat to Kinsey Institute researchers,and the rest of the university’s faculty, ison the horizon: the state legislature last week advanced a bill that hands university board of trustees the power to evaluate tenure appointments every five years for “criteria related to free inquiry, free expression and intellectual diversity” – effectively erasing the point of tenure.
Indiana isn’t alone– in 2023, at least six states introduced nine bills to undermine tenure, according to the American Association of University Professors. Tenure has long been believed to be essential to academic freedom, since it allows higher-education faculty to pursue potentially controversial work without fear of repercussions.
The Indiana University president, Pamela Whitten, said in a statement that while the university was still evaluating the Indiana bill, she was “deeply concerned” that it would put “academic freedom at risk, weaken the intellectual rigor essential to preparing students with critical thinking skills and damage our ability to compete for the worldclass faculty who are at the core of what makes IU an extraordinary research institution”.
“It’s a scary moment in general for academic freedom,” said MelissaBlundell Osorio, a research assistant at the Kinsey Institute and a PhD student. “There are people who are just uncomfortable in general with the idea of research into sexuality.”