The company said that the site would close indefinitely and that it would permanently stop making liverwurst. Union officials said the plant’s 500 workers would be given severance and offered relocation.Boar’s Head announced on Friday that it would indefinitely shut down the troubled Virginia deli meat plant that has been tied to a deadly listeria outbreak.The company also said it had identified liverwurst processing as the source of contamination and would permanently discontinue the product.Federal inspectors had repeatedly found health and sanitation violations at the plant in Jarratt, Va., with an extensive review two years ago by inspectors who said it posed an “imminent threat” to food safety. That finding could have resulted in a warning letter or even a suspension of production there, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture did not take strict measures and allowed the plant to stay open.In July, Boar’s Head began recalling its lunch meats after health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began to trace hospitalizations that now number 57, as well as nine deaths of people 70 and older, back to the meats produced at the site. It paused production at the plant in late July. “Given the seriousness of the outbreak, and the fact that it originated at Jarratt, we have made the difficult decision to indefinitely close this location,” the company said in a statement posted Friday.Jonathan Williams, communications director for the union that represents about 500 workers at the plant, said the company was providing severance packages and relocation to the employees.Mr. Williams, of the United Food & Commercial Workers Local 400 union, said the company gave employees the option to continue to work at the other Virginia processing center that the company operates or to transfer to others. Boar’s Head runs facilities in Michigan, Indiana, New York and Arkansas.New Agriculture Department records released by the company on Friday show that inspectors deemed the company’s methods to control listeria inadequate after taking swabs of various pieces of equipment on July 24.The inspectors concluded that “product may have been prepared, packed, or held under insanitary conditions, whereby product may have become contaminated with filth,” in a notice delivered to the company on July 31.The company said it would appoint a new safety council of veteran food safety experts and hire a new chief food safety and quality assurance officer who will report directly to the company president.

U.S. inspectors listed serious problems in 2022 that could have resulted in strict measures like a pause in production. But the plant continued operating, and some conditions persisted.Two years before a deadly listeria outbreak, U.S. inspectors warned that conditions at a Boar’s Head plant posed an “imminent threat” to public health, citing extensive rust, deli meats exposed to wet ceilings, green mold and holes in the walls.But the U.S. Agriculture Department did not impose strict measures on the plant, in Jarratt, Va., which could have ranged from a warning letter to a suspension of operations.Since then, other inspections found that many of the problems persisted, but again, the plant continued to process tons of beef and pork products, including liverwurst.Genome sequencing tests by public health officials in New York and Maryland tied a strain of listeria found in Boar’s Head liverwurst to the bacteria from people who died or fell ill, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The company recalled its liverwurst late in July. Days later, Boar’s Head expanded the recall to cover more than 3,500 tons of meat — including ham and other items made in the Jarratt facility, one of several it operates.Production at the meat processing center has been temporarily stopped. Boar’s Head said it was disinfecting the plant and trying to determine the cause of the suspected contamination. Nine elderly people have died and dozens were hospitalized in the worst listeria outbreak in years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.