Foundation Food Group was experiencing “unresolved operational issues” on the chicken conveyor that appears to have resulted in the accidental release of liquid nitrogen (LN) in a flash freezing bath at its plant in Gainesville, Georgia, in an incident that led to the death of six people.
The incident, which occurred on January 28, is being investigated by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB).
CSB earlier reported that the leak occurred on Line 4 of the plant, and that unplanned maintenance was being done on that line, and that tools were found near the line at the time.
In an updated report, CSB reported that the equipment on the line was owned by Messer and leased to Foundation Food Group, but Foundation Food Group performs routine maintenance on that equipment. The report further stated Line No. 4 was shut down on the morning of the incident, and the shutdown was due to operational issues on the conveyor line. The report also said Foundation Food Group’s maintenance personnel reported the computerized measuring system indicated a low liquid level in the immersion bath used to flash freeze the chicken products.
According to CSB, the system installed on line 4 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 nitrogen (from stage 1), to complete the freezing process.
The six people killed in the accident have been identified as Saulo Suarez-Bernal, Jose De-Jesus Elias-Cabrera, Corey Alan Murphy, Nelly Perez-Rafael, Victor Vellez and Edgar Vera-Garcia.
The Gainesville Relief fund has been set up to assist the families of those lost in the accident.
Prime-Pak Foods and Victory Processing, also located in Gainesville, recently merged to create Foundation Food Group, Inc.
