Podcast - 2024 Election Impacts on Food and Agriculture Policy
GLP-1 Drugs and Cultivated Meat: What’s the Impact on the Food and Agriculture Industry?
Video: Food for Thought and Thoughts on Food: Innovating USDA Science with Sanah Baig, Deputy Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics
Food for Thought and Thoughts on Food: A Discussion on Scaling in Food and Other Industries
Internal Investigations and the Food, Beverage and Agribusiness Industry
[Podcast] Food for Thought and Thoughts on Food: What to Expect in 2023
USDA FSIS Proposes to Declare Salmonella an Adulterant in Breaded Stuffed Raw Chicken Products
Analyzing the Growing Complexity of Food Law, Industry Advances and the Road Ahead Under a New Administration
RCG Webinar | Where's the Beef?
Episode 139 -- DOJ Resolves Two Food Safety Criminal Cases -- Blue Bell Creameries and Chipotle Mexican Grills
Nota Bene Episode 38: How Regulations Surrounding the Food Industry are Evolving with Michael Roberts and Sascha Henry
Polsinelli Podcast - Is a Single U.S. Food Agency a Reality?
Polsinelli Podcast - Food Safety Modernization Act
On May 9, 2025, the White House issued an Executive Order, “Fighting Overcriminalization in Federal Regulations,” that seeks to place limits on the criminal enforcement of regulatory offenses, particularly those that impose...more
The Justice Department has a long-record of criminal prosecutions of companies for manufacturing food products under unsanitary conditions. In recent years, DOJ has prosecuted Blue Bell Ice Cream, Chipotle, ConAgra Grocery,...more
A salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds brought the largest criminal penalty ever imposed following a criminal conviction in a food safety case. Our Food & Beverage and White Collar, Government & Internal Investigations...more
On May 1, 2020, Blue Bell Creameries L.P. (Blue Bell) agreed to plead guilty to charges that it distributed contaminated ice cream products that were linked to a 2015 listeriosis outbreak. The Blue Bell outbreak made...more
In an important set of criminal prosecutions for food safety violations, the Justice Department recently announced resolutions with Blue Bell Creameries and Chipotle Mexican Grill....more
Monday, we considered the guilty pleas by Blue Bell Creameries to charges that they distributed adulterated ice cream products and pay a criminal fine and forfeiture amount totaling $17.25 million. According to the Department...more
May 4th is universally recognized (at least in the universe I inhabit) as Star Wars Day. According to Wikipedia, “May 4 is called Star Wars Day because of the popularity of a common pun spoken on this day. Since the phrase...more
Two core principles of American criminal liability are: (1) a crime does not occur unless the accused has both criminal intent (mens rea) and commits a criminal act (actus reus); and (2) the intent and the act must occur at...more
In an important decision, on July 6, 2016, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the prison sentences imposed on Jack DeCoster, and his son, Peter, under the “responsible corporate officer” doctrine (aka Park doctrine)...more
Last Thursday, July 7, 2016, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit upheld a three-month jail sentence against Austin “Jack” DeCoster and his son Peter, the CEO and COO respectively of Quality Egg...more
Over the last ten to twenty years, we have witnessed the expansion of federal criminal prosecution of health and safety matters. Environmental and food and drug regulatory enforcement has been supplemented by aggressive...more
Accidents do sometimes happen, even in well-run factories and construction sites. Where there has been an accident in the U.K., companies face prosecution by the Health & Safety Executive (“HSE”) in the criminal courts...more
As we enter 2016, adulterated food-related investigations are leading the headlines—and should be leading companies in the food and beverage industry to ask what they can do to prevent and prepare for a potential outbreak on...more
The former CEO of Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), has been sentenced to an unprecedented 28 years for his role in the 2008-09 Salmonella outbreak linked to the deaths of nine people and more than 700 illnesses. While it...more
In the wake of reports about the government’s investigation of Blue Bell Creameries, the United States Department of Justice has issued an ominous warning to food companies: compliance failures will be aggressively...more
This space has thoroughly explored the various forms of civil liability food companies face for the mislabeling and/or deceptive marketing of their products. Last week, a set of landmark convictions in a criminal food-safety...more
In another show of force against food processors, federal prosecutors in Colorado recently brought criminal charges against two brothers who owned a cantaloupe farm linked to a 2011 listeria outbreak that killed 33 people....more