FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
News from Progress Michigan
March 30, 2015
Contact: Sam Inglot, 616-916-0574, sam@progressmichigan.org
Aramark’s Five-Second Rule: Employee Took Food from Trash, Rinsed, Reheated & Served It to Inmates
Days before November election, an Aramark employee served food from the trash, which inmates refused to serve
MICHIGAN — Emails obtained by Progress Michigan through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that an Aramark employee was caught serving food that had been thrown in the trash. According to the email, inmates refused to serve the food, but Aramark employees served it anyway.
The food was taken from the trash, rinsed off, reheated and then served, according to the emails, which were withheld from Progress Michigan prior to the election in November. According to the emails, the incident occurred on October 29th at Saginaw Correctional Facility.
“The fact that inmates refused to serve this food, and yet an Aramark employee felt comfortable doing so, speaks volumes about the company’s corporate culture,” said Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan. “This contract has jeopardized the safety of prison staff, corrections officers and prisoners and Gov. Snyder needs to cancel the contract immediately.”
According to an email from Sigfried Lindner, an Aramark general manager, to Michigan Department of Corrections officials, an Aramark employee “discarded the left-overs from the line before the last half unit was in chow hall. He then realized that there were more inmates to serve so he rinsed them off, reheated them in the oven and instructed the inmates to serve them. They refused so he and Miss Gibson proceeded to serve them to the remaining inmates.”
“This is just the latest — and one of the most disgusting — examples of Aramark’s incompetency in our state. The public has a right to know what is really going on with this contract and it shouldn’t take thousands of dollars and FOIA’ed documents to get the truth,”Scott continued. “This contract has been riddled with problems and Gov. Snyder has refused to come clean about what he knows and what he plans to do about Aramark. However, until he decides to do so Progress Michigan will continue to shine a light on these abuses of taxpayer dollars.”
Earlier this month, Progress Michigan revealed that Aramark had served rodent-eaten food to inmates in July of last year. These scandals add to a long list of problems associated with the state’s contract with Aramark, as the company has had numerous problems in the state’s prisons and across the country.
The latest email is only two pages among tens of thousands of pages of Aramark-related emails, which Progress Michigan is continuing to analyze daily, along with thousands of other pages that the group is still expecting from MDOC from their original request on September 12, 2014. A copy of the email exchange can be found below and is available online.
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Aramark 5 Second Rule Email by progressmichigan