Family Dollar Stores LLC to Pay $41.675 Million in Connection with Rodent-Infested Warehouse
Crime
A criminal information unsealed February 26 in federal court in Little Rock, Arkansas, charged Family Dollar with one misdemeanor count of causing FDA-regulated products to become adulterated while being held under insanitary conditions.
The company, a subsidiary of Dollar Tree Inc., entered into a plea agreement that includes a sentence of a fine and forfeiture amount totaling $41.675 million, the largest-ever monetary criminal penalty in a food safety case.
The plea agreement also requires Family Dollar and Dollar Tree to meet robust corporate compliance and reporting requirements for the next three years.
In pleading guilty, the company admitted that its Arkansas distribution center shipped FDA-regulated products to more than 400 Family Dollar stores in Alabama, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. According to the plea agreement, the company began receiving reports in August 2020 of mouse and pest issues with deliveries to stores.
By the end of 2020, certain stores reported receiving rodents and rodent-damaged products from the warehouse. The company admitted that by no later than January 2021, some of its employees were aware that the insanitary conditions caused FDA-regulated products held at the warehouse to become adulterated in violation of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA).
According to the plea agreement, the company continued to ship FDA-regulated products from the warehouse until January 2022, when an FDA inspection revealed live rodents, dead and decaying rodents, rodent feces, urine, and odors, and evidence of gnawing and nesting throughout the facility.
According to the plea agreement, subsequent fumigation of the facility resulted in the reported extermination of 1,270 rodents. On Feb. 18, 2022, the company voluntarily recalled all drugs, medical devices, cosmetics, and human and animal food products sold since Jan. 1, 2021 in the 404 stores that had been serviced by the warehouse.