MO Altria Group Inc

By Jennifer Maloney 

The chief executive of Altria Group Inc.'s smokeless-tobacco subsidiary said Friday that cans were tainted in "a deliberate, malicious act" by people familiar with safety and product quality systems inside a factory that is slated to close next year.

The U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. CEO, Brian Quigley, said in an interview that the company is investigating whether the tampering, which led to a recall issued earlier this week, was done by workers or contractors at its Franklin Park, Ill., manufacturing facility.

He declined to say what led the company to believe that the tobacco had been deliberately tainted. The company issued a voluntary recall Tuesday for all products manufactured at the Franklin Park facility after receiving reports from consumers who found pieces of metal -- some of them sharp -- in their smokeless tobacco cans.

There were no injuries in the nine cases reported so far, a company spokesman said. In each case, the consumer found a single piece of metal at least an inch in length.

U.S. Smokeless Tobacco is conducting the investigation in conjunction with the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Criminal Investigation and Center for Tobacco Products, the company spokesman said. An FDA spokesman said he couldn't confirm or deny the existence of an investigation.

The Franklin Park factory employs about 300 workers, who were told in October that the facility would be closed by early 2018. It is one of two manufacturing facilities where U.S. Smokeless Tobacco flavors and packages products, in addition to two other facilities for leaf processing and another for developing new products.

Altria has been interviewing employees at the Franklin Park facility. Mike Masterson, a union representative for the factory's eight operating engineers, said one of his members had been interviewed but wasn't called back for a follow-up interview as some other employees were. Officials appeared to be focusing on employees who worked an overnight shift on a particular day, he said.

If the allegations prove true, "it's certainly disappointing," he added. "I don't think anybody would condone intentionally tampering with product that could have serious health effects...our crew, a lot of them have been there a number of years and continue to take pride in the work they're doing."

The company spokesman declined to comment on personnel matters. Union representatives for other workers didn't respond to requests for comment or declined to comment Friday.

"I really can't speculate on what the triggering event would be," Mr. Quigley said. "When you have such a deliberate, malicious act, it's really hard for me -- I wouldn't want to speculate on what triggered that. That's what the investigation is really focused on concluding."

U.S. Smokeless Tobacco said it received the first consumer report on Jan. 18. It stopped shipments from the Franklin Park factory last week, and stopped production there on Wednesday, Mr. Quigley said. The company's field sales force, Altria Group Distribution Co., has contacted 160,000 stores carrying the affected products and so far has made visits to 34,000 of them as part of the recall effort.

Mr. Quigley declined to say how much the factory produces, but said that the majority of the company's most popular products aren't affected by the recall because they are manufactured elsewhere.

The company spokesman declined to say whether the factory has video surveillance.

Altria, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, is also one of the biggest makers of moist smokeless tobacco. It shipped 813.5 million smokeless tobacco units in 2015.

The recalled products include several varieties of Copenhagen, including Extra Long Cut Natural and Long Cut Mint, and about two dozen Skoal flavors, including Bandit Mint and Long Cut Cherry. A smaller number of Husky and Cope products were also included. All of the tainted products were packaged in plastic cans with a tin lid, Mr. Quigley said. Complaints have come from consumers in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Ohio.

"We want to make sure our consumers know what's going on," Mr. Quigley said. "We are focused on getting our products back to them as quickly as we can."

The FDA said consumers who experience problems with the products should report them through the Center for Tobacco Products' Safety Reporting Portal.

Write to Jennifer Maloney at jennifer.maloney@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 03, 2017 17:01 ET (22:01 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.