By the time city Health Department officials shut down the Giant Food store in Hampden on Friday, there was one dead mouse floating in a bucket of water, one lying in a trap and two left under the cabbage unit in produce. A live mouse was spotted under the cucumber section.
Giant Foods officials told the Department of Health on Tuesday that they?ve scrubbed the store, are hiring extra staff and are tightening pest control measures to ensure the store stays sanitary after it was closed for Friday afternoon. The store reopened Saturday.
A Health Department official said he?s satisfied, but if the problems crop up again, the Giant in the Rotunda could be shuttered completely.
“We have quality assurance procedures in place, and for whatever reason we did have some deficiencies in that store,” said Jamie Miller, a spokesman for Giant. Even before the customers complained last week about mice nibbling the bread and showing up around the produce, Miller said, Giant officials knew about the pest problem and were working to fix it.
But when health inspectors got there Friday, they found evidence of a “heavy mice infestation” in the rear warehouse, including a trapped dead mouse near a soda storage area, according to Health Department documents. Droppings were found scattered on the bakery shelves and around the cake mixes and icings in the store aisles, the documents say.
Workers cleared the affected aisles of everything from egg noodles to sugar, gourmet chips to salad croutons, plus cookies, crackers and bagged pet food, and cleaned the shelves, according to the department. They took out the trays, emptied the cooling racks and cleaned the shelves in the bakery. They removed the dead mice “immediately,” scrubbed the floors in the warehouse and canvassed the store, patching or sealing openings where mice might get in.
The city is satisfied with the lengths the Giant went to, said Bernard Bochenek, a director in Health Department. About 300 stores of various sizes are shut down in the city every year, he said. “Unfortunately, they do happen,” he said.
“We?re going to continue to follow a strict cleaning program in the store, and monitor sanitary conditions,” Miller said, “to make sure that we maintain a safe and sanitary store.”
