The owner of a dairy company that caused a Listeria outbreak in Austria faces more than a year in prison. The head of Käserei Gloggnitz was sentenced to 13 months in prison this week. According to media reports, the 39-year-old was charged with several counts but denied the allegations, and the verdict was not final.
A Listeria outbreak from 2020 to 2022 resulted in ten cases and at least three deaths.
Käserei Gloggnitz experienced financial difficulties in 2022, prompting the opening of insolvency proceedings, and the plant was ordered to be closed in 2023.
Additional allegations will be heard in mid-March at the Regional Court of Wiener Neustadt, where several other witnesses will be questioned.
In a January 2023 audit, DG Sante reviewed a file from the dairy plant linked to the outbreak. Käserei Gloggnitz had a poor compliance record, and an inspection in 2020 revealed several significant flaws. An inspection one year later yielded equally serious results.
However, those findings did not result in increased inspection frequency or enforcement until an epidemiological link between infections and the company was established in the autumn of 2022, when authorities ordered that production be halted.
There were six women and three men aged 29 to 82, as well as a newborn baby. The Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES) confirmed that illnesses occurred in Vienna.
Käserei Gloggnitz recalled all kajmak, drinking yogurt, and cream cheese products in September 2022 due to a possible Listeria monocytogenes contamination. Cajmak is a type of cheese.
Officials discovered Listeria that matched the outbreak strain in three environmental samples collected from the company in Lower Austria. The outbreak strain was also found in the food it produced.
