A Federal inspector accused the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Thursday of failing to take proper action against a meat processing plant linked to the recent listeria outbreak in the Northeast. Vincent Erthal, a meat and poultry inspector with the USDA, claims he filed two years of reports detailing persistent sanitation violations at the Wampler Foods' plant in Franconia, Pennsylvania.

According to Erthal, who alleges employees at the facility were careless when cleaning the floors and prepared raw poultry in the same area where food was processed, his supervisor ignored several of his reports. Erthal says USDA officials believed they could not intervene because the harmful bacterium was found on the plant's walls and equipment and not in the food. In mid-October, Wampler recalled 27.4 million pounds of poultry after listeria was detected in the floor drains of the plant. Nearly 50 illnesses and seven deaths have been attributed to the outbreak.