Unscheduled maintenance was being done on equipment at a poultry processing plant in Gainesville, Georgia, where six people died on January 28, an investigation by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) revealed.
The CSB issued a statement that it had been investigating the fatal incident, which occurred at Foundation Food Group’s Prime Pak Foods plant in Gainesville. On that day, it was confirmed that a liquid nitrogen (LN) leak had occurred, which led to the death of six people and the hospitalization of as many as 12 other people. Some of those patients have since been released, CSB stated.
According to the CSB notice, the leak occurred on Line 4, where chicken is processed to include seasoning, cooking, freezing and packaging. The focus of the investigation is on the line’s cryogenic freezing system, which was manufactured by Messer. The CSB further stated that prior to the recent installation of this system, a different type of freezing equipment was used, which was ammonia based. That equipment had not yet been removed, it and was still located on Line 4 near the cryogenic system.
The investigation led to the discovery tools near the immersion freezer n Line 4, and CSB said that it had learned that unplanned maintenance was being done on Line 4.
“The system installed is a LN immersion-spiral freezer. This process occurs in two stages. In the first stage, the chicken travels on a conveyer belt and is submerged in LN at a temperature of -320F. In the second stage, the conveyer belt travels through the spiral freezer portion, and the chicken is exposed to recovered gaseous N (from stage 1), to complete the freezing process,” the CSB statement read.
CSB said it will provide more updates on the situation as the investigation progresses.
Prime-Pak Foods and Victory Processing, also located in Gainesville, recently merged to create Foundation Food Group, Inc.
