Area plant erred with excess fat

AUGUSTA -- If you ate a hot dog made at Jordan's Meats a few years ago, you may have gotten a little more fat than usual.

Federal investigators say workers at a former meat-packing plant in Augusta produced hot dogs that were too fatty and then falsified reports about it during a two-year period.

The company that took over the Jordan's Meats/Russer Foods plant on Riverside Drive recently paid almost $109,000 in fines for producing hot dogs that exceeded federal standards for fat content, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Evan Roth, assistant U.S. attorney, said the violations were discovered by a U.S. Department of Agriculture investigator doing an on-site review.

"He stumbled across a report marked 'Draft' that showed several items out of compliance, but they reported them as in compliance," Roth said.

The standards were violated at least 11 percent of the time between Dec. 30, 1998, and Jan. 17, 2002, Roth said. The Riverside Drive plant, originally built by the Joseph Kirschner Co., employed as many as 170 people before it closed in 2004.

"They were a USDA accredited lab in 1993 and trusted with doing their own testing," Roth said. "The government trusted them to report the test results accurately and they breached the trust."

As a result of the falsified results, "The United States government and the public at large unwittingly purchased a variety of out-of-compliance meat products, which Jordan's should not have sold in the marketplace," the release said.

"There is a regulation that a frankfurter cannot have more than 40 percent fat and added water," Mark Hopson, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney who represented Jordan's Meats. "That was the specific regulation that was violated."

He said the percentage of fat and added water was found to be up to 42 percent in tests of products on supermarket shelves.

Mary Winchenbach, quality assurance manager at the plant, was the only person to face criminal charges in connection with the violations, and she pleaded guilty to a charge of obstruction of proceeding before departments/agencies.

In 2004, she was sentenced to six months in federal prison and two years of supervised release and fined $3,000.

Jordan's Meats is now owned by Zemco Industries, a subsidiary of Foodbrands America, Inc., doing business as Russer Foods.

"Because we were the owners when the relevant misconduct occurred, the company remains responsible even though the plant itself is closed," Hopson said.

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