Inspectors who returned to a Minneapolis warehouse in November and December 2025 counted 9 live rodents, 17 dead rodents, 8 live birds, 1 dead bird and 5 live worms among products the FDA regulates, including infant formula. On September 21, 2026, a federal court in Minnesota entered a consent decree that bars the company, Gold Star Distribution, Inc., from receiving or distributing any of those products until the building passes inspection.
The decree also names the company’s owner, Bassam Abu Samrah. It ends a long run of warnings from state and federal officials, and it arrives with no illnesses reported and no criminal charge filed, so the case rests on conditions rather than on documented harm to shoppers.
Rodent droppings on packaging, confirmed in the lab
The FDA’s announcement of the consent decree describes a facility with rodent excreta pellets, urine stains, gnaw holes and nesting materials, along with leaking refuse, gaps in the structure and ceiling leaks. Laboratory testing confirmed rodent urine, excreta and hair on product packaging. The warehouse handled human and animal food, dietary supplements, infant formula, drugs, medical devices and cosmetics, and specific goods named in the agency’s account include rice, cat food, sanitary pads and drugs.
A consumer-law account published by the Marler Blog named brands, listing Enfamil and Enfamil Gentlease among the infant formulas, Meow Mix and Friskies pet food, and over-the-counter medicines such as Tylenol and Advil. The same write-up said the Minnesota WIC program supplied formula to small authorized stores through Gold Star. The Marler summary is from a law firm that represents food-poisoning plaintiffs, so its brand list is best read as secondary to the FDA’s product categories.
Thirty-one inspections, and a decade of warnings
The paper trail is long. The FDA inspected the warehouse five times before 2025, and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture visited on 26 occasions between 2013 and 2025. KSTP reported that 19 of those state inspections documented rodent violations and that 11 ended in orders to destroy food. In late 2025 the state revoked the company’s wholesale license.
Minnesota’s other regulators moved as well. According to Food Safety News, the Department of Agriculture issued embargo and cease-and-desist orders in November 2025, and in December the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy issued its own cease-and-desist order over the storage of drugs. Elizabeth Miller, the FDA’s associate commissioner for inspections and investigations, framed the case as a matter of repeated inaction, saying, “When a company repeatedly ignores serious, ongoing violations that put trust at risk, the FDA will act.”
Gold Star’s owner offered a different account of what went wrong. After the December recall, he told the Star Tribune that the problem stemmed from infested rice shipments and birds getting into the warehouse, and that the business planned to relocate, and describing the business as being in “a bad position.”
Renovation, destruction and a written go-ahead
Under the decree, Gold Star must stop receiving, holding and distributing regulated products, hire an independent expert to write sanitation and drug-storage plans, eliminate all pests and filth, finish facility renovations and destroy every regulated product on site under FDA supervision. Operations cannot restart until independent experts and the FDA inspect the site and the agency gives written notice that the company appears to comply.
The recall came first. On December 26, 2025, the company announced through the FDA that it was recalling all FDA-regulated products held at the facility because of “rodent excreta, rodent urine, and bird droppings” in areas where drugs, devices, food, pet food and cosmetics were stored. The recall notice warned of possible Salmonella and other bacterial contamination, said no illnesses had been reported, and told customers to destroy products rather than return them.
The FDA’s page says the products reached three states without naming them. The recall notice lists store locations in Minnesota and Indiana, and the Marler Blog gives the three as Minnesota, Indiana and North Dakota, from a recall covering nearly 2,000 products at 59 retail locations. The Star Tribune reported that much of the stock went to halal markets around the Midwest.
The civil route matters for what happens next. A consent decree is an agreement entered as a court order, so a later violation can be enforced through the court rather than through a fresh lawsuit. The Marler Blog contrasted the outcome with the Family Dollar case in Arkansas, where a company pleaded guilty in June 2024 and paid $41.675 million, and noted that Gold Star faces a civil injunction only.
A question that the court order leaves open is what happens to the goods already sold before the recall. The FDA’s announcement says products were shipped into three states over months of documented infestation, yet the notices reviewed here say nothing about how many customers bought from the affected supply, or about any penalty beyond the civil injunction.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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