MS Coast Dollar Tree store shut down until further notice over critical food violation
The Dollar Tree store on U.S. 90 in Waveland is closed until further notice after an inspection found at least one critical food violation or repeat violations.
A sign posted at the store says it was inspected by the Department of Agriculture and was found to have one or more critical food sanitation issues or repeat critical violations.
Callers to the store were directed by an answering machine to leave a message.
Similar to restaurant inspections by Mississippi Department of Health, the state Agriculture Department inspects retail food stores annually and applies a grading system.
A Red grade indicates the store is closed because of immediate danger to public health and safety.
Stores are rated Green if they pass the inspection with no critical violations, but there’s also a Green “Conditional Pass” if they had a violation that was corrected during the inspection. A Yellow score is given if a critical violation could not be corrected before the inspector left, if a critical violation was repeated from the last inspection, even if corrected at the time of the follow-up inspection, or if more than five repeated noncritical violations were found on a follow-up inspection.
The closure of the Waveland store comes after Family Dollar and Dollar Trees stores across several states were forced to close in February when officials inspected a Family Dollar distribution center in Arkansas and found more than 1,000 rats and dead birds.
The center distributes food and products to 404 Family Dollar Stores across Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Tennessee.
Two Family Dollar stores in the Lyman area of Gulfport and Hattiesburg were closed at that time for clean-up. The Waveland store was not on the list of stores forced to close at that time.
Family Dollar did a voluntary recall of various products at its stores in February. Among those products were food, vitamins, medical products, cosmetics and skincare products, pet foods and bird seed.
Dollar Tree owns Family Dollar and in several places the stores share the same building.
The Sun Herald will update this article.
This story was originally published March 22, 2022 at 11:30 AM.
