UNITED STATES-HEALTH WARING TO MEAT PLANT OWNERS.
Kathryn Rayburn’s lungs - and how they became diseased - are the subject of a Hamilton County trial that began Monday.
Rayburn, 48, accuses a Carthage flavor maker and others of not protecting or warning workers who made and packaged microwave popcorn that was flavored with a chemical that can cause an irreversible lung disease.
Rayburn is one of at least two dozen who filed suit in Hamilton County against Givaudan Flavors - the Carthage flavor-maker formerly called Tastemakers - and International Flavors & Fragrances. They are part of an estimated 300 or more such suits across the country where workers complain they developed "popcorn lung" after being exposed to diactyl, a chemical used to make butter flavoring.
Rayburn, of north-central Ohio , and the others worked at a Con Agra Snack Foods plant in Marion where they made and packaged microwave popcorn brands Act II and Orville Redenbacher. The suits accuse Givaudan and IFF of ignoring information that the flavoring could make workers sick.
"She’s likely going to need a lung transplant ... the last desperate step to stay alive," Missouri attorney Kenneth McClain, who represents Rayburn, told a Hamilton County jury as the trial started Monday.
But attorneys for the flavor-makers say Rayburn’s long-term smoking habit and previous lung injuries - not exposure flavoring chemicals - caused her lung disease.
"If she had never stepped foot in the Con Agra plant, her medical condition would be what it is today. Her problem is smoking," attorney Kim Ramundo, who represents Givaudan, told jurors.
McLain said his client was a "pulmonary cripple" who has less than 30 percent of her lung capacity.
She, and the hundreds of others suing the flavor-makers, allege their exposure to diactyl caused lung diseases. Diactyl is bought by Givaudan and IFF and mixed with oil and other ingredients to make natural and artificial butter used by Con Agra and other microwave popcorn makers. Diactyl - which McClain said belongs to the same chemical family as paint strippers - is mixed to produces flavors for food, gum, coffee and alcohol products.
Rayburn accused Givaudan of knowing the chemical caused lung illnesses for workers and said IFF should have known it did. The companies, McClain added, decided against proactively addressing the cause of its workers illnesses to protect themselves.
"Both of these companies knew better," McClain said.
Givaudan hired University of Cincinnati employees to investigate why so many of its workers were getting sick but, McClain said, fired or forced them to sign confidentiality agreements that prevented the true level of danger to the workers from being exposed.
"Ultimately, both companies removed diactyl from their product. They could have removed it all along and we wouldn’t be here today," McClain said. "Their conduct was not an accident."
Attorneys for both companies said those companies did all they could to protect workers because no one connected exposure to diactyl to the lung disease until this decade.
They also told jurors that when the companies learned of the connection, they took steps to protect workers including requiring workers to wear respirators and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to improve ventilation and air circulation in the areas where the chemical was used.
Con Agra has announced it will remove butter flavoring containing diactyl from its popcorn products because of health risks to workers.
The case is presided over by Common Pleas Court Judge Beth Myers and could take weeks.
Last month, an Iowa jury awarded a worker $7.5 million after he complained his lungs were diseased by flavor provided by Givaudan as he mixed it in to provide butter flavoring for the microwave popcorn at the plant where he worked for 20-plus years.
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