A former raw milk cheese manufacturer and his company pleaded guilty on Tuesday in connection to an outbreak of listeria from 2016 to 2017 that killed two people and left six others hospitalized, prosecutors said.
The man, Johannes Vulto, and the Vulto Creamery company each pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of causing the introduction of adulterated food into interstate commerce, the Justice Department said in a statement.
As part of the plea agreement before Magistrate Judge Thérèse Wiley Dancks in Syracuse, N.Y., Mr. Vulto was ordered to pay $100,000, according to court documents. He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 9, and could face up to one year in prison, a fine of $250,000 and one year of supervised release, according to court documents.
Mr. Vulto, 64, opened his creamery in Walton, N.Y., in 2012 to make and sell cheese from unpasteurized milk, according to court documents. His products, including an artisanal cheese called Ouleout, became popular in part for their flavors, and also because of Mr. Vulto’s compelling story: He moved to the United States from the Netherlands in 1990, and had been an artist-in-residence at an institution linked to the Museum of Modern Art in New York before turning to making cheese from his Brooklyn apartment.
But customers started becoming sick after eating the company’s cheeses. The first cases were reported in September 2016.
Mr. Vulto shut down his business in March 2017, after the Food and Drug Administration had linked cheese from the creamery to an outbreak of listeria, prompting the agency to issue a recall of its products, prosecutors said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that eight people had been hospitalized in the outbreak linked to the business. Of those eight people who were sickened, two had died, according to the C.D.C.
Between July 2014 and February 2017, Mr. Vulto had swabbed parts of his facility and had the samples sent to labs to be tested for listeria, according to the plea agreement. Mr. Vulto took swabs on at least 20 different occasions during that period, and 18 were found to be positive for listeria, according to court documents.
Listeria does not cause serious illness in most people, but certain high-risk individuals can be especially vulnerable, according to the C.D.C. About 260 people die after listeria infections every year in the United States, according to the agency. An infection can cause fever, diarrhea, vomiting and flulike symptoms, according to the C.D.C.
Carla B. Freedman, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, said in a statement that the investigation and prosecution held Mr. Vulto and his business accountable after they “caused illness and death to consumers in an entirely preventable tragedy.”
A lawyer for Mr. Vulto did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
The Food and Drug Administration, which investigated the outbreak, declined to provide additional comment on Tuesday, citing ongoing litigation.
Criminal charges stemming from adulterated food products are not filed regularly, but they do occur. In 2016, two cheese companies and a cheese company executive pleaded guilty to conspiring to sell adulterated and misbranded cheese, according to the Justice Department. No one had been sickened in that instance.
Fernando McMillan, a special agent with the F.D.A.’s office of criminal investigations, said in a statement that consumers count on the agency to “ensure that their food is safe and wholesome.”
“When companies and individuals put themselves above the law by producing food that endangers and harms the public, as occurred in this case,” he said, “we will see that they are brought to justice.”
