Rotten Chicken Sickens Homeless As Shelter Staff Laugh: Report

FORT GREENE, BROOKLYN — Expired chicken salad the city served at a homeless shelter in Fort Greene sickened at least half a dozen people last week, according to the Daily News.

The sour chicken salad was served for lunch at the Fort Greene Shelter on Auburn Place last Thursday, along with a fake expiration sticker covering the label that showed it expired five weeks earlier.

“All of a sudden I started to get light-headed and I started sweating,” shelter resident Edna Smith, 53, told the News.

Smith said the salad smelled sour, but she began to eat anyway. Eventually, she was one of at least four people projectile vomiting up the meal, while security guards and shelter workers laughed, residents told the News.

“They started laughing about it,” another resident, Pierre Landro, told the News "This is not a laughing matter. This is food poisoning. Plenty of people die from food poisoning.”

At least six people total were sickened by the rotten food, the News said.

The chicken salad was marked as expiring on Oct. 31, but a closer look revealed that the original label underneath was dated Sept. 20.

Landro said this isn't the first time the city has served up food with bogus expiration labels.

“They’re giving us food that has double labels and I have the evidence," he said. “This isn’t the first time this happened. This has gone on a number of times. This is unbelievable.”

The city's Department of Social Services confirmed to the News that a food vendor contracted with the city for $35 million had delivered expired meals with inaccurate labels. The food labels on the chicken salad were switched at a Sally Sherman Food location in Westchester County and delivered by the vendor Whitsons.

The department asked the food company to take "immediate corrective action" and put together a plan to make sure it doesn't happen again, the department told the News. The rancid chicken salad was an isolated incident, they added.

“We will not tolerate any action that puts the health and safety of families experiencing homelessness at risk and we have temporarily replaced the food provider at this shelter pending our ongoing review," the DSS spokesperson said.

Both food companies have a history of questionable quality. The Food and Drug Administration sent Whitsons and Sally Sherman Foods separate warning letters over the summer for the germ listeria and other unsanitary conditions, the News said.

To read the full Daily News report click here.