Sysco to pay nearly $20 million in improper food storage settlement

[alp227]

Source: San Jose Mercury News

SAN JOSE -- A major food distribution company has been ordered to pay nearly $20 million in fines and restitution after an investigation revealed the company was improperly storing perishable foods.

Sysco Corporation, the largest U.S. food distribution company, along with its seven California affiliates, regularly kept perishable foods such as seafood, milk and raw meat in unrefrigerated sheds, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's office. Prosecutors say Sysco food trucks would deliver small food orders to unrefrigerated and unsanitary sheds and then later, the food would then be picked up by employees who would use their personal cars to deliver the food to restaurants, hotels, hospitals and schools.

Sysco stopped those practices once they were revealed in an NBC Bay Area report, which led to a statewide investigation by the Department of Public Health.

"It is not a luxury for our food to be handled with the utmost professional care to ensure that it is not dangerous," District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement. "That is your right and that is the law."

Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_26170154/sysco-pay-nearly-20-million-improper-food-storage

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NBC Bay Area stories about Sysco: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/series/syscos-secret-food-stored-in-unrefrigerated-sheds-across-us-and-canada/Syscos-Secret-Food-Stored-in-Unrefrigerated-Sheds-Across-US-and-Canada-227398521.html

[TexasTowelie]

1. Robert Irvine isn't going to like this!

Guess who will be getting a special episode on Retailer's Impossible?

[packman]

7. Yah, Robert Muscleman, does

push Sysco to all those food joints that have rotting cabbage and foul slimy chicken in buckets. Bob comes in sneers at the food and decor, yells at the dysfunctional family running the restaurant, rips or tears down a wall, holds a group therapy session with the staff, bitches about how the restoration is going, teaches how to cook a few dishes, brings owners into redone restaurant, has an test opening - chaos - but things all work out. Same old, same old.

I read somewhere that about 60% of those "saved" joints fail within a year anyway.

[TexasTowelie]

12. The 60% failure rate of restaurants is overstated and he has a better record than Gordon Ramsay

According to http://www.foodnetworkgossip.com/p/restaurant-impossible-updates.html 43 of 98 Restaurants Have Closed, 4 Restaurants Have Sold, and 51 of 98 Restaurants Are Still Open with the same owners. Considering that the show has been on since 2011, that record is probably a slight bit ahead of what is occurring in the overall restaurant industry. That Website (which is independent of the Food Network) has a breakdown for each restaurant by season if curious.

[SunSeeker]

2. ....

[Sherman A1]

3. One wonders where

the logic and management were at when this idea came up? This is a company that does pretty much nothing but handle food and this is how they act? I also wonder why no one is going to jail? Another good example of corporations going off the deep end with few if any consequences.

[valerief]

5. ^^^THIS^^^

[seabeckind]

6. Were the workers paid extra?

"employees who would use their personal cars to deliver the food to restaurants, hotels, hospitals and schools"

Or did the company just have them do the delivery "on their way home"? One of those activities where an employee does the company a favor and pretty soon the company sees a way to pick up some extras bucks by eliminating local deliveries.

What absolute scum.

[Gormy Cuss]

8. From other reports I've seen, it was sales staff doing that last leg

but I haven't heard any suggestion that it was done off-clock (which of course doesn't mean that it wasn't.)

SYSCO saved a ton on driver labor either way.

[Recursion]

4. That's not "a major food distribution company"

That's "THE major food distribution company".

[Sunlei]

9. This is what happens when any big business is allowed to self-regulate. Wonder how many years,

they got away with the extra-profit bonanza?

[Omaha Steve]

10. There s a SYSCO terminal in Omaha

I wonder how that terminal is handling perishable food?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

11. To think some Republicans claim the Department of Health should be eliminated.