San Diego Firm Accused of Fraud in Berry Scare

SAN DIEGO — A San Diego food-processing firm and its top executive, whose contaminated frozen strawberries were linked to an outbreak of hepatitis A among dozens of Michigan schoolchildren in March, were indicted Tuesday on charges of defrauding the federal school-lunch program.

Andrew & Williamson Sales Co. and its president and co-owner, Fred Williamson, were named in a 47-count federal grand jury indictment in connection with the sale of Mexican strawberries to a U.S. Department of Agriculture program that stipulates that only domestic crops be used in free lunches.

Williamson is to be arraigned in federal court today and will plead not guilty, his attorney, Howard Frank, said Tuesday. “The indictment comes as no surprise,” Frank said.

The company and Williamson are charged with one count of defrauding the United States, three counts of false statements and 43 counts of false claims. Company executives denied the charges Tuesday in a statement.

A company salesman, Richard Kershaw, pleaded guilty May 21 to making false statements in the sale of misbranded strawberries to the USDA. His guilty plea was disclosed Tuesday.

The indictment caps a two-month investigation of the strawberry contamination, which sickened 198 students and teachers in Michigan, devastated strawberry farmers in California and Mexico and caused a scare in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where as many as 9,000 students and teachers were exposed to tainted fruit.

The key issue of where and how the contamination occurred--in the Baja California strawberry fields or at the Andrew & Williamson cannery in San Diego--may never be known. Probes by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed to pinpoint the source of the contamination, but they ruled out the Michigan schools.

As a result, Williamson, 60, who could face up to five years in jail on the charges filed Tuesday, was not charged with adulteration of the food, which could have carried 18 more months in jail time. Williamson was not available for comment.

After the Michigan schoolchildren fell ill in March, the virus was traced to frozen strawberries that had been grown in Baja California and processed at Williamson’s plant in San Diego. Williamson sold 1.7 million pounds of the berries for $902,000 to the USDA, which channels surplus U.S. crops to needy children nationwide.

Hundreds of contaminated cases of strawberries were also shipped to Los Angeles schools, but no Californians are believed to have contracted the disease from the strawberries, CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.

The scare and a resulting quarantine caused steep economic losses among farmers in California and in Baja California and reverberated in Congress and the White House. Mexican farm officials claimed the investigation was a ruse to damage the marketability of that country’s strawberries.

Hepatitis A is a highly contagious virus that is rarely fatal but produces flu-like symptoms and discomfort. The outbreak was traced to 240 cases of frozen strawberries served to the Michigan youngsters in 4-ounce plastic dessert cups, according to the CDC.

According to the charges filed in federal court here, Williamson committed fraud by falsely certifying to the USDA that the strawberries he processed were “100% domestically grown,” when in fact they had been harvested in Mexico in April and May 1996, Assistant U.S. Atty. Phillip Halpern said.

Economically, the hepatitis scare caused at least $15 million in crop losses to California farmers, or 3% of the state’s annual $500 million crop, according to the Watsonville-based California Strawberry Commission.

The outbreak occurred at peak harvest season for farmers in San Diego, Ventura and Orange counties, rendering fruit virtually unmarketable to supermarkets. Many growers cut losses by selling to processors, however.

The furor prompted several investigations and a proposed $43-million federal program to guard against tainted crops. Some of those funds would be spent on better tests to detect elusive hepatitis A and cyclospora, a parasite linked to Guatemalan raspberries that last year sickened 1,000 people.

Many farmers around San Quentin, a strawberry- and tomato-growing region of Baja California about 200 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border, plowed their berry crop under rather than go to the expense of harvesting a crop for which there was little market.

The sale of the Andrew & Williamson firm to Epitope of Beaverton, Ore., which had been arranged before the outbreak, was rescinded afterward. Epitope executives were released from liability.