Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

August 28, 2010

Blind eye turned to egg czar's spotty past

Maryland and Iowa were eager to reap the economic benefits of Jack DeCoster's large farms.

By ANDREW ZAJAC Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Long before Austin "Jack" DeCoster became a central figure in one of the largest egg recalls in history, he had paid more than $10 million in fines and suit settlements, his eggs were banned in one state and quarantined in another and he was almost single-handedly responsible for new restrictions on child labor in his native Maine.

He also was embraced by local governments in two states eager to reap the economic benefits of a large egg farm -- even a rule-breaking one.

Earlier this month, DeCoster's Wright County Egg farms in Iowa recalled 380 million eggs. A second Iowa egg producer, partly supplied by a DeCoster-owned firm, pulled another 170 million eggs off the shelves.

On Thursday, federal authorities confirmed that the two operations are contaminated with the same strain of salmonella that has sickened at least 1,500 people. The outbreak is one of the largest salmonella outbreaks ever, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

Health officials said they do not expect the recall to increase beyond the current total, but say the tally of the sick may rise as individual cases are linked to the contaminated eggs.

Meanwhile, political pressure has built, with at least one congressional investigation under way and a hearing on egg safety slated for the middle of next month.

NEGLECTED BY THE FDA

The half-billion egg recall is a stunning regulatory failure: The FDA, which is responsible for the safety of whole eggs, has acknowledged that it had never inspected either set of Iowa facilities -- notwithstanding DeCoster's decades-long trail of regulatory battles.

A spokeswoman for DeCoster said he is working with the FDA on issues related to the recall, but she declined to comment on the slew of past allegations.

The recall also is a testament to the willingness of communities to accept a trade-off between filled tax coffers and a business shadowed by pollution, civil rights and safety issues.

"Please note that while this man has very poor business practices and a history of violations of environmental laws, he has contributed a great deal to Wright County, not only in the form of property taxes, but also by increased numbers of students in our school system, which leads to more state aid for education, and also through donations to community projects," Barb Mussman, publisher of the Wright County Monitor, said in an e-mail.

DeCoster, who is in his mid-70s, runs his egg empire with the help of two sons, Jay, who helps manage operations in Maine, and Peter, who is chief operating officer of Wright County Egg.

'KIDS WERE ALWAYS BEING HURT'

In the late 1970s in Maine, DeCoster, already a large, well-established egg producer, was battling opponents on multiple fronts.

He'd been sued by his neighbors for a beetle infestation, was fending off union organizing drives and was under scrutiny by the Labor Department for an array of violations of wage and hour laws.

Perhaps most significantly, the Maine Legislature passed a law prohibiting children under 16 from working in proximity to "hazardous machinery or hazardous substances" because of accidents involving teenage workers at DeCoster's facilities.

"It was because of DeCoster. Kids were always being hurt there," said James Tierney, a former Maine attorney general, who as a state representative voted in favor of the measure.

"There's no question that DeCoster's egg farm was a major law enforcement problem in my time in the Legislature and as attorney general," Tierney said in a telephone interview on Thursday.

But three months after Maine legislators approved the DeCoster-inspired changes in the state's child labor laws, DeCoster sealed a lucrative deal in another state. Commissioners in Kent County, Md., approved an $8.5 million industrial revenue bond to help DeCoster finance a large egg farm that soon became one the county's largest taxpayers and purchasers of locally grown feed.

(Continued on page 2)

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