Health Officials Increase Scrutiny of Cola Bottling Plant : Investigation: Inspections at Pepsi facility’s warehouse in Buena Park have yielded birds, dead mouse. Report of a rat in unopened can fueled concern about safeguards.

County health inspectors have increased scrutiny of a Pepsi-Cola bottling plant in Buena Park since learning of a woman’s contention that she found a dead rat in a Pepsi can and since an inspection there Thursday turned up birds in the warehouse, a county health official said.

Inspectors from the Orange County Health Care Agency scheduled a follow-up inspection in two weeks after finding the birds, one of which was dead. In May, inspectors also found birds and one dead mouse in the same warehouse area, county health records show.

The discovery Thursday “has enough significance that we’ve scheduled an early inspection, especially because we noted it in a prior report,” said health agency Assistant Director James E. Huston.

Health officials said, though, that most of the plant’s violations over its 20-year history have been minor. Overall, its quality control has been good. The plant has passed dozens of health inspections, including five in the past year by county, state and federal health inspectors, they said.

“I’d consider (their record) fairly typical,” said inspector Tom Aherns. “It’s a large facility, a large number of employees, a building that isn’t brand new, so you will find violations.”

Pepsi Public Affairs Manager Jeffrey Brown acknowledged that inspectors found a dead mouse in May and birds there in May and on Thursday, but said they were about 70 yards from the food processing area.

“It gives absolutely no credence to a theory that any rodent could get into our manufacturing process and beyond safety procedures,” Brown said. “It is highly improbable that a rodent could compromise Pepsi’s many safety procedures.”

On Friday, 22-year-old Maria Del Consuelo Lazaro filed a lawsuit against Pepsi Cola Inc. and Albertson’s grocery store chain. Lazaro, a schoolteacher from Jalisco, Mexico, alleges that she became sick in July after she drank from a Diet Pepsi can she had bought at an Albertson’s. Staff at Anaheim General Hospital cut open the can and found the remains of a rat, according to the lawsuit. The hospital sent the can and its contents to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which confirmed that the can contained a rat.

County health records also show that cans of Pepsi from the same plant were the subject of complaints about something that looked like a bone and a “cockroach-like object” in March, 1989, and October, 1992. Inspections turned up no serious health code violations.

In February, 1990, inspectors went to the plant because of a complaint that pallets from the plant’s warehouse were “infested” with rats. Inspectors found neither rats nor rat droppings, but nevertheless recommended that that doors between the warehouse and the cola processing area be “rodent-proof.”

In May of this year, inspectors told Pepsi managers to “exterminate the infestation of birds and rodents in the warehouse. Observed some birds and a dead mouse at the time of this inspection.”

Brown said the use of the word “infestation” in the report was exaggerated.

“Infestation to them could mean the possibility of a rat in there,” Brown said. “It doesn’t mean there were scores of rats.” He said the company has been working for months on humane ways to eliminate the birds.