Pursuit to a 16-page plea arrangement that leaves little to the creativity, a previous raw milk cheese producer and the business he owned and handled pleaded guilty today to charges connected to cheese that was connected to a fatal break out of listeriosis.
Johannes Vulto and his business, Vulto Creamery LLC, are set up for sentencing on July 9 at the U.S. Courthouse in Syracuse, NY. The optimal sentence for the single misdemeanor count is one year jail time, a fine of $250,000, and one year of monitored release plus a 5-year regard to court guidance.
The plea contract needs a payment of $100,000 from Vulto and a 1 year monitored release to start after any jail time.
Following an examination by the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations, the misdemeanor charge of Introducing Adulterated Food into Interstate Commerce was submitted on Jan. 30, 2024, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.
The criminal info filing stated that from in or around July 2014, through and consisting of on or about March 4, 2017, in Delaware County in the Northern District of New York, and somewhere else, offender Johannes Vulto “did trigger the intro of food into interstate commerce, specifically cheese produced at Vulto Creamery that was adulterated since it was prepared, loaded, and held under insanitary conditions whereby it might have been rendered damaging to health under Title 21, United States Code …”
Johannes Vulto and his business, Vulto Creamery LLC, each pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of triggering the intro of adulterated food into interstate commerce.
Vulto supervised operations at Walton, NY’s Vulto Creamery making center, consisting of sanitation and ecological tracking. In pleading guilty, Vulto and Vulto Creamery confessed that in between December 2014 and March 2017, they triggered the delivery of adulterated cheese in interstate commerce.
According to the plea contract, ecological swabs taken at the Vulto Creamery center in between around July 2014 and February 2017 consistently evaluated favorable for Listeria types. The Listeria household consists of safe types and Listeria monocytogenes, which can trigger human listeriosis.
In March 2017, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration connected Vulto Creamery’s cheese to a break out of listeriosis, Vulto closed down the Vulto Creamery center and provided a partial recall that was broadened to a complete recall within weeks.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the listeriosis break out led to 8 hospitalizations and 2 deaths.
“American customers need to have the ability to trust that the foods they purchase are safe to consume,” stated Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “The department will continue to deal with its police partners to call to account food makers that offer precariously infected items.”
“This examination and prosecution holds responsible the accused and his company who through risky practices triggered disease and death to customers in a completely avoidable disaster,” stated U.S. Attorney Carla B.
