Egg farm owner Jack DeCoster is in a lot of trouble.  His egg farms – Quality Egg LLC d/b/a Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms of Iowa – have been linked to the Salmonella Enteritidis outbreak that has sickened over 1500 nationwide.

He’s already hired a team of criminal defense lawyers.

The FDA – and now FBI – are crawling all over his Iowa egg farms right now.  Several environmental samples taken from the farms (and the farms’ feed mill) have already tested positive for the outbreak strain of Salmonella Enteritidis that has sickened so many people in the past 3 months.

The inspection reports recently released by the FDA show a pattern of disregard for the health and safety of customers, workers, and the chickens themselves.  Live mice, wild birds, 8 foot tall manure piles, rodent burrows, bird feces in the feed mill, un-caged hens, dirty “dead hen” trucks, and “live and dead flies too numerous to count” are just some of the findings so far.

But what is even more troublesome is that this is not the first time DeCoster has had run-ins with the law.  A review of his prior history reveals a “habitual violator” that should not have been allowed to produce eggs in the first place.

Prior Health and Safety Violations – Over $15,000,000 Worth of Them

As first documented in an excellent piece by Alec McGinnis of the Wall Street Journal, DeCoster and his companies have paid over $15,800,000 in fines and settlements in the last 11 years alone:

• 1996 – DeCoster is fined $3,600,000 for health and safety violations at his family’s egg farm in Turner.  Labor Secretary Robert Reich remarked that the farm was “as dangerous and oppressive as any sweatshop we have seen”  where workers were forced to handle manure and dead chickens with their bare hands and live in filthy trailers.
• 1999 – His company paid $5,000,000 to settle a class-action lawsuit involving unpaid overtime for 3,000 workers.
• 2001 – Iowa Supreme Court finds that DeCoster was a “repeat violator” of state environmental laws.  The family was forbidden to expand its hog-farming interests in the state.
• 2001 – DeCoster Farms of Iowa pays $1,500,000 to settle an EEOC complaint that the company had subjected 11 undocumented female workers from Mexico to a “sexually hostile work environment,” including sexual assault and rape by supervisors.
• 2002 – OSHA fines the family’s Maine Contract Farming branch $345,810 for an array of violations.
• 2002 – DeCoster Egg Farms of Maine pays $3,200,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by workers alleging discrimination in housing and working conditions.
• 2003 – DeCoster pays the US government $2,100,000 .as part of a plea agreement after federal agents found more than 100 undocumented workers at his Iowa egg farms.  It was the largest penalty ever against an Iowa employer.
• 2006 – Federal agents find 30 workers suspected illegal immigrants at a DeCoster farm in Iowa.
• 2007 – Raids at DeCoster Iowa farms uncovered 51 suspected undocumented workers.
• 2006 – Ohio’s Department of Agriculture revokes the permits of Ohio Fresh Eggs because its new co-owners, including Hillandale founder Orland Bethel, had failed to disclose that DeCoster had put up $126 million for the purchase, far more than their $10,000, and was heavily involved in managing the company. By playing down DeCoster’s role, the owners had avoided a background check into DeCoster’s “habitual violator” status in Iowa.  The permits are later reinstated.
• 2008 – OSHA cites DeCoster’s Maine Contract Farming for worker violations, including forcing workers to retrieve eggs from inside a building that had collapsed under ice and snow.
• 2010 – The DeCoster family agrees to pay a $34,675 fine stemming from allegations of animal cruelty against hens in its 5 million-bird Maine facility.  Hens were documented suffocating in garbage cans, twirled by their necks, kicked into manure pits to drown, and hanging by their feet over conveyor belts.

In the wake of the largest salmonella outbreak in US history, will Congress step up and take action that prevents this guy from poisoning us again?

My law firm any my clients are working on the problem.  Anyone want to help?

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