By Tom Gilchrist
For The Advertiser
BAY CITY — A federal grand jury accuses a former executive with a Huron County farmers’ cooperative of causing soy flour containing salmonella bacteria to be introduced into interstate commerce.
If convicted, JoAnn Rutkowski — formerly of the Thumb Oilseed Producers Cooperative in Ubly — could face up to three years in prison. Rutkowski is charged with one felony count of causing the introduction of adulterated food into interstate commerce. Rutkowski did so “with the intent to defraud and mislead,” according to the grand-jury indictment.
Rutkowski is free on bond awaiting a July 8 trial in U.S. District Court in Bay City.
Thumb Oilseed Cooperative Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2012, according to The Wall Street Journal website. The corporation’s Ubly cooperative sold soy flour, soy grits and refined soy oil, and had 180 member soybean growers in 10 Michigan counties, according to the newspaper’s website.
Federal prosecutors allege Rutkowski committed a crime between Dec. 6, 2010 and Jan. 12, 2011, when she was chief operating officer for the Thumb Oilseed Producers Cooperative.
Rutkowski declined comment on the charge, but pleaded not guilty at her arraignment March 11 before federal Magistrate Judge Charles E. Binder. If convicted, she could be sentenced to a maximum of three years in prison, one year of supervised release and a maximum $10,000 fine.
Salmonella annually causes an estimated 1.2 million illnesses in the U.S., with about 23,000 hospitalizations and 450 deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
An October 2011 press release from the Thumb Oilseed Producers Cooperative states salmonella “can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems.” The press release states the cooperative initiated a recall of soybean flour and bulk soy meal. A year earlier in 2010, the cooperative initiated a voluntary recall of its organic low-fat soy flour, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
In June of 2010, the FDA sent a “warning letter” to Rutkowski, stating that salmonella was found in 43 areas within the Ubly plant during an inspection earlier that year.
Inspectors allege they found salmonella in the plant’s finished product — organic low-fat soy flour — as well as on a forklift wheel and in a gap in the processing floor, among other locations. The FDA wrote that the plant’s “soy grit and soy flour products were adulterated … in that they were prepared, packed or held under insanitary conditions whereby they may have been rendered injurious to health.”