Tuna Company Charged Over Worker Cooked Alive With 6 Tons of Fish
On Monday, Bumble Bee Foods and two employees were charged with felony safety violations over the death of worker burned alive in an industrial pressure cooker, the Associated Press reports.
According to Los Angeles County prosecutors, the company, their director of plant operations and a former safety manager each face three counts of violating OSHA rules over the incident, which occurred in 2012. From the L.A. Times:
On Oct. 11, 2012, Jose Melena, 62, entered a 35-foot oven at the company’s Santa Fe Springs plant to make a repair inside the machine, which is used to sterilize thousands of cans of tuna at a time.
Unaware that Melena was inside the oven, other plant workers loaded several carts that altogether held about 12,000 pounds of tuna, shut the door and turned on the oven, prosecutors said.
Temperatures peaked at around 270 degrees, and Melena cooked to death, prosecutors said. His charred remains were found by another plant worker.
“We remain devastated by the loss of our colleague Jose Melena in the tragic accident,” Bumble Bee said in a statement on Monday. “We disagree with and are disappointed by the charges filed by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office.”
Prosecutors say the company could be fined as much as $1.5 million. In 2014, Bumble Bee Foods reportedly generated about $1 billion in sales.
