Raw milk cheese producer, company plead guilty in listeria outbreak that killed 2

March 6 (UPI) -- A former raw milk cheese producer and his company have pleaded guilty to charges related to a listeria outbreak that killed two people in 2017.

The defendants, Johannes Vulto and his New York-based Vulto Creamery company, each pleaded guilty Tuesday to one misdemeanor count of causing the introduction of adulterated food into interstate commerce, the Justice Department said.

Sentencing is to be scheduled at a later date.

"It is crucial that American consumers be able to trust that the foods they buy are safe to eat," Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton, head of the Justice Department's Civil Division, said in a statement.

"The department will continue to work with its law enforcement partners to hold responsible food manufacturers that sell dangerously contaminated products."

Listeria is a severe invasive illness that can result in death.

In the plead agreement, Vulto and his company admitted that they caused the shipment in interstate commerce of adulterated cheese between December 2014 and March 2017.

According to the prosecutors, the Vulto Creamery facility repeatedly tested positive for listeria species between July 2014 and February 2017, but it was only shut down in March of that year after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration linked it to an outbreak of the disease that spanned four states.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said two people from Connecticut and Vermont were killed and eight others were hospitalized, including a newborn, in the outbreak.

The creamery initially issued a partial recall that it then expanded to full recall.

In April 2018, the Justice Department ordered the creamy to stop producing and distributing products.

"When companies and individuals put themselves above the law by producing food that endangers and harms the public, as occurred in this case, we will see that they are brought to justice," Special Agent in Charge Fernando McMillan of the FDA's Office of Criminal Investigations New York Field Office said in a statement.

The announcement comes as United States battles a listeria outbreak linked to queso fresco and cotija cheese. Two people have been killed in the outbreak and another 23 have been hospitalized.