Family Dollar to pay nearly $42 million in connection with rodent-infested warehouse

Family Dollar Stores was hit with a record fine for violating product safety standards after selling items that were stocked in a rat-infested warehouse filled with live, dead and decaying rodents.

Family Dollar Stores was hit with a record fine for violating product safety standards after selling items that were stocked in a rat-infested warehouse filled with live, dead and decaying rodents. The retailer, a subsidiary of Dollar Tree was fined $41.6 million, “the largest-ever monetary criminal penalty in a food safety case,” the Justice Department said in a statement Monday. Family Dollar and Dollar Tree will also be under robust corporate compliance and reporting requirements for the next three years, according to the DOJ. “When consumers go to the store, they have the right to expect that the food and drugs on the shelves have been kept in clean, uncontaminated conditions,” Benjamin Mizer, acting associate attorney with the DOJ, said in the statement. “When companies violate that trust and the laws designed to keep consumers safe, the public should rest assured: The Justice Department will hold those companies accountable.” Family Dollar’s rat and mice problem goes back to 2020 when the US Food and Drug Administration issued an inspection report describing a distribution facility operated by the discount chain in Arkansas as dirty and rat-infested, and where merchandise including human and animal food was stored. The inspectors noted in that report of observing “rodent evidence, including live rodents, dead rodents of various states of decay, rodent excreta pellets … gnawings, nesting, and odors indicative of rodents throughout the entirety” of the facility.