Boar's Head hit with consumer lawsuit after deli meat recall over listeria concerns

By Diana Novak Jones

(Reuters) - Boar’s Head Provisions was hit with a proposed consumer class action lawsuit in New York federal court on Thursday, a day after it expanded its recall to more than seven million pounds of deli meats and other products over concerns that they are contaminated with potentially deadly listeria bacteria.

In the lawsuit, filed in Brooklyn, Boar’s Head customer Rita Torres says she purchased one of the recalled products but would have avoided it had the company warned consumers about the possible contamination. The lawsuit appears to be the first proposed class action filed in the wake of the recalls, according to court records.

Torres, who is seeking to represent a nationwide class of Boar’s Head customers who purchased the recalled products, is seeking unspecified monetary damages.

Representatives for Boar’s Head did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did attorneys for the proposed class. Boar's Head, a family-owned company founded in 1905, sells products in grocery stores nationwide and outside the United States.

On July 26, the company initially flagged more than 200,000 pounds of liverwurst and other deli products for recall over concerns about listeria, which can cause illness particularly in pregnant people, people with weakened immune systems and the elderly, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The company dramatically expanded the recall on Tuesday to include more than 70 products made at the company’s Jarratt, Virginia, facility between May and July, according to the department.

The company told customers to discard the products or return them to the store where they were purchased for a full refund in a statement about the recall on its website.

As of Tuesday, 34 people have been sickened in the outbreak across 13 states, including 33 hospitalizations and two deaths, according to the USDA.

At least one other lawsuit against Boar's Head has been filed over this alleged outbreak, by a Missouri woman who says she consumed some of the contaminated deli meat and fell ill. It's pending in state court in St. Louis.

(Reporting by Diana Jones; Editing by Leigh Jones and Diane Craft)