Family Dollar Fined $41.7M Over Rat-Infested Warehouse

Prosecutors say company knew about infestation, continued shipping products
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 27, 2024 6:50 PM CST
Family Dollar Fined $41.7M Over Rat-Infested Warehouse
The Family Dollar logo above one of its variety stores in Canton, Mississippi.   (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

Family Dollar Stores has agreed to pay a record fine for shipping goods from a warehouse that it knew was rat-infested. The company was fined $41.7 million, a record in a food safety case, after it pleaded guilty Monday to holding food, drugs, medical devices, and cosmetics under insanitary conditions, NBC News reports. Under the plea deal, Family Dollar and its parent company, Dollar Tree, will have to "meet robust corporate compliance and reporting requirements for the next three years," the Department of Justice said in a press release.

The department said stores had reported receiving rodent-damaged deliveries from the West Memphis, Arkansas facility in 2020, and the company admitted that by no later than January 2021, some employees knew "the insanitary conditions caused FDA-regulated products held at the warehouse to become adulterated." But the distribution center continue shipping products to more than 400 Family Dollar stores until a January 2022 FDA inspection "revealed live rodents, dead and decaying rodents, rodent feces, urine, and odors, and evidence of gnawing and nesting throughout the facility," the department said.

"It is incomprehensible that Family Dollar knew about the rodent and pest issues at its distribution center in Arkansas but continued to ship products that were unsafe and insanitary," said US Attorney Jonathan D. Ross for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Almost 1,300 dead rodents were found after the facility, which shipped goods to stores in Alabama, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, was fumigated. In February 2022, the company launched a massive recall of goods that had passed through the warehouse. In a statement, Rick Dreiling, Dollar Tree's CEO since January last year, said the company has "worked diligently" to help Family Dollar resolve the issue and ensure there is no repeat, CBS News reports. (More Family Dollar stories.)

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