Saturday, January 29, 2011

Food Terrorists who are they?

This is a letter to the Editor that I submitted to the Western Producer a newspaper that is aimed on the agricultural industry of Western Canada.

I read with interest the article titled Food Terrorism Poses Threat to Agriculture from the January 20,2011 issue. I would have to ask the question WHO is actually putting the health and safety of the public at risk? The mentally ill people who would knowingly poison or taint the food to harm unsuspecting consumers or the industry giants that are systematically eliminating the small farmer and concentrating our food supply into smaller and smaller distribution centres?
If we did not have huge factory farms and processing plants we would not have to worry about such large impacts from someone tampering with the food such as the incidents that Mr. Hutchinson refers to. The fear mongering of risk to the agricultural industry from terrorism is a red herring as far as I am concerned.
In fact the real threat to public safety seems to come from the industry itself. Take for example the recent recall of 380 million eggs over 17 states by Wright County Egg of Iowa owned by Jack DeCoster  who  has been a constant violator of regulations and has paid millions of dollars in fines since 1996 for human rights, environment, industry standards and animal abuse violations.  All of which are just the cost of doing business for this billionaire.
What about the Maple Leaf listeriosis outbreak of 2008, which was linked to four confirmed deaths and countless other illnesses across Canada.
Most recently the B.C. E-Coli 0517 strain investigation. The company Pitt Meadows Meat has solved this problem simply by dropping their Federal licence for a Provincial licence, which does not require testing for E-Coli. Now THAT legislation certainly is meant to protect the consumer, or do I mean the industry? These are just the most recent and public recalls, there are many more that I could list.
My point being that the so called “Terrorists” are the least of my worries. I fear more from the dollar grabbing industry leaders who daily put profits before the consumer and NOW want laws put in place to protect their already secretive and fear dominated practices from the scrutiny of public opinion. Remember, when you vote to take the rights away from one group of people you are ultimately voting to take away your own rights.
I feel since the consumer is the one paying for their exorbitant profits we have the right to know how our food is being raised, treated and processed. The comment about animal welfare activists and the video of the downed cow serves only as a masked insinuation that concerns for animal welfare in the industrialization of farming are a threat against the food safety of the world. What the factory farming industry is really afraid of is the loss of profits once the truth becomes commonplace and the public demands that consumers, workers and animals all be treated with the respect they deserve.
My response to Mr. Hutchinson’s  statement  “ Be careful who you hire and if you are in charge, know your business. You will be held responsible” is to advise everyone to support your local farmer and buy local.  If you really want to avoid the fear of being poisoned by “Terrorists” remember you get to control the industry practices three times a day with every meal that you eat!

What I did not include in my Letter to the Editor were some of the charges against the owner of the owner of Wright County Egg of Iowa owned by Jack DeCoster. Here are some of the charges that he has been found quilty of including the rape of his immigrant workers by supervisors!:
DeCoster Animal Factories:
Decades of Endangering Workers and the Environment
Austin "Jack" DeCoster has owned and operated intensive, industrial-scale animal confinement plants in the U.S. since the early 1960s. Doing business under various company names, such as Quality Egg of New England, LLC, DeCoster Farms, and Maine Contract Farming, LLC, DeCoster has become the largest producer of eggs in New England, and a major player in the Iowa pig farm belt. DeCoster egg operations also figure prominently in the Midwest, with multiple facilities in Iowa, Ohio, and Maine. DeCoster Farms entered the ranks of the nation’s most notorious polluters of land and water in the 1990s, after constructing several huge pig feeding operations in Iowa that stretched surrounding communities’ abilities to deal with the resulting waste well beyond their limits. DeCoster’s record of environmental devastation
• Prior to 1993: Even before he built his first large-scale Iowa pig farming operation, Austin J. "Jack"
has been matched by a long record of violations against the most basic rights of workers. Over the years, DeCoster businesses have been the target of investigations and penalty proceedings by a wide range of state and federal agencies, among them the federal Occupational Safety and Health Commission (OSHA), the U.S. Immigration and Customs Administration, the Maine Human Rights Commission, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Examples of DeCoster’s many brushes with the law follow:DeCoster had already drawn the serious attention of environmental and labor law enforcement authorities. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection had brought a 14-count action against him for activities that were polluting both air and water. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) had investigated DeCoster in connection with farm workers’ reports that they had been exposed to lethal asbestos in DeCoster chicken houses. There had also been a federal suit brought against DeCoster under the Migrant Agricultural Workers Protection Act, based on workers’ reports of unfit housing, and of illegal threats and harassment ongoing at DeCoster plants.1• July, 1996: DeCoster was fined over $3.6 million by OSHA for mistreatment of workers at his Maine egg farms. At these facilities, federal investigators found that workers had been forced to handle manure and dead chickens with unprotected, bare hands, and that the trailers serving as worker housing were filthy and infested. Then-Labor Secretary Robert Reich described the conditions at the Maine DeCoster egg operations as "among the worst" found in the U.S.21 Pigs, profits, and rural communities2 "In Maine, Egg Empire is Under Fire," New York Times, August 29, 1996, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0DEED91E39F93AA1575BC0A960958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all• June, 2000: DeCoster was named Iowa’s first "habitual violator" of state environmental laws, after losing a succession of enforcement cases brought against him by the Iowa Attorney General. At the time, DeCoster Farms’ pig-feeding business confined hundreds of thousands of pigs, and was generating more manure than it could contain in its underground pits. When the company simply spread its excess manure across open land, and transported huge volumes of it along open county roads, manure flowed into public waterways, causing hazardous pollution. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources ordered DeCoster immediately to construct concrete manure-storage structures, and assessed him a $150,000 civil penalty. DeCoster’s "habitual violator" status raised applicable penalties for noncompliance from $5,000 to $25,000 per day, and barred DeCoster from constructing any new confinement feeding operations.3• June, 2002: OSHA imposed a fine of $345,810 on Maine Contract Farming LLC (a DeCoster business successor) and several other related entities in Turner, Maine, based on findings that they had refused to remedy hazardous conditions that were continually placing workers in danger. At the time of this OSHA action, the egg farm already had a documented history of roof collapses. Violations listed in the June 2002 OSHA order included exposed asbestos, defective eyewash stations, hazardous electrical equipment, uninspected fire extinguishers, unsanitary shower facilities, and fall hazards. Commenting on the OSHA penalty, an Auburn, Maine lawyer who had represented 80 workers in a pay-violation case against DeCoster told press that Maine Contract Farming and its associates were "still DeCoster Egg Farm," and "still operated by Austin DeCoster."4• July, 2002: DeCoster Egg Farms of Maine agreed to pay $3.2 million to settle a discrimination lawsuit brought against it by Mexican workers who suffered deplorable working conditions while working at the Farms. The workers asserted that DeCoster Egg Farms had exploited their vulnerable immigration status in order to avoid obligations to comply with labor laws. The plight of the workers was so substantial that the Mexican government joined in the case, and made the case a cause celebre. 5• 2001 – 2003: In 2001, the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence (ICADV) filed a federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint against DeCoster Farms in Wright County, Iowa, on behalf of female workers who reported that they had been sexually assaulted and raped by supervisors at DeCoster Farms. EEOC reviewed the complaint, and sought an injunction against DeCoster. This resulted in an order requiring DeCoster Farms to enforce federal anti-harassment and non-retaliation policies at its facility, and to cooperate with EEOC’s ongoing investigation into the facts underlying the workers’ complaint. EEOC ultimately ruled for the workers, but DeCoster would not cooperate towards a settlement payment. EEOC therefore commenced a formal proceeding against DeCoster, which ended in 2003, when DeCoster agreed to pay $1.3 million in damages to 11 workers, $100,000 to ICADV, and $125,000 to any additional victims who might be identified within a year of the settlement decree. 63 Release, June 15, 2000, Iowa Attorney General, Iowa Department of Justice, http://www.iowa.gov/government/ag/consumer/press_releases/Decoster-settlement-release-6-15-00.html4 "OSHA cites former DeCoster Egg Farm for $345,000 in alleged violations," Portsmouth Herald, June 8, 2002, http://archive.seacoastonline.com/2002news/6_8maine2.htm5 "Mexico Wins $3.2 Million Settlement with DeCoster Egg Farms on Behalf of Workers," July 3, 2002, www.aztlan.net/decoster.htm 6 U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Office of General Counsel Report, Fiscal Year 2003 Annual Report, Top Ten Cases Resolved in FY 2003 by Monetary Benefits, http://www.eeoc.gov/litigation/03annrpt/index.html• August, 2003: A. J. DeCoster pleaded guilty to federal charges that he had knowingly and repeatedly hired illegal immigrants at his Northern Iowa egg plants. The charges resembled others that DeCoster had faced and settled in 1989, for his illegal hiring practices at Maine-based egg operations. Under the terms of the Iowa plea agreement, DeCoster paid the federal government $1.25 million, and another $875,000 in restitution, to cover some of the government’s enforcement and monitoring costs at his plants. DeCoster was also required to pay for unannounced facility and record inspections at his plants, for five years following the date of his plea. 7• June, 2006: During the third immigration raid of DeCoster egg operations in Iowa since 2001, law enforcement officials confirmed that DeCoster was still engaging in illegal hiring practices at his six Iowa egg facilities. Thirty-six workers were detained in the course of this enforcement operation. 8• May, 2007: Former DeCoster manager Cacy Cantwell was granted a hearing before the Maine Human Rights Commission on his complaint that DeCoster had fired him and stripped him of company housing on the sole grounds that Cantwell is an atheist. A Commission investigator who reviewed the evidence found a reasonable basis for Cantwell’s assertion of religious discrimination. Cantwell supplemented his Human Rights Commission complaint with a separate filing against DeCoster at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 9• September, 2007: Federal immigration investigators raided the same six DeCoster egg farms in Iowa that had been raided by officials in June, 2006. Children were among the 51 illegally hired workers found on the premises, this time. 10• August, 2008: OSHA cited DeCoster surrogate Maine Contract Farming for willful violations of worker safety laws, based on findings that during the prior Winter, the company had forced workers to salvage eggs from inside a dangerously unstable structure that had collapsed from the weight of ice and snow. OSHA called this company misconduct "astonishing" and "unacceptable." For actions that exposed workers in other buildings to additional collapse hazards, and which allowed workers to operate powered industrial trucks in a way that exposed them to the risk of crush injuries, OSHA issued the egg operation two additional citations for hazards that OSHA classified as likely to result in death or serious injury to workers. 11Here is the article that I was responding to:
Food safety | Agricultural terrorism
Food terrorism poses threat to agriculture, says expert
By William DeKay
Saskatoon newsroom
The risk of food terrorism in Canada is real, said security expert Asa Hutchinson.
Speaking to the Farm Animal Council of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon recently, the former undersecretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned that there is a continued global threat to the agricultural community.
“Let me assure you that if you are a thoughtful terrorist and you look at ways to attack United States or Canada or western civilization, you will consider agriculture as a terrorist target,” he said.
U.S. agriculture represents 13 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, employs 15 percent of the population and has $50 billion in exports.
Canada’s numbers are smaller but also significant.
“It’s a perfect symbolic and economic target,” said Hutchinson.
In 1952, he said an African insurgent group used a local plant toxin to kill cattle at mission stations.
In 1978, the Arab Revolutionary Council poisoned Israeli oranges with mercury, injuring 12 people and reducing orange exports by 40 percent.
In an effort to protect the food supply chain, Hutchinson urged industry to implement its own security measures in partnership with government.
“It’s better to have a thoughtful approach in advance. Rather than inspecting everyone that goes on the airplane, what we should have done is to rely on intelligence to identify and try to inspect people who pose a risk to us as the Israelis do,” he said.
“To identify your threat, you have to first identify your vulnerabilities and develop a security plan that meets those threats and vulnerabilities that is suitable and matches your environment.”
Hutchinson says those working in agriculture need to take responsibility to protect agriculture because the risk is substantial.
“It’s your market. It’s your revenue stream. Not that someone would attack your farm but that there’s an attack on the marketplace itself and the public loses confidence,” he said.
Hutchinson said food processing plants are the most vulnerable be-cause there are large quantities of product passing through a confined environment.
Animal welfare activists are also threats to the industry, citing videos posted on the internet of a downer cow at a U.S. beef slaughterhouse.
“Be careful who you hire and if you are in charge, know your business. You will be held responsible,” he said.
, Kendall M. Thu and E. Paul Durrenberger, Eds., State University of New York Press (1998) p. 127.

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