What does it take to get shut down in America?380 million eggs have been recalled due to salmonella contamination. The contamination has been traced to a factory farm in Galt, Iowa called "Wright County Egg." Poking around, it turns out the farm is owned by the DeCoster family, a father-son industrial farm duo with a lengthy track record of environmental, labour, cruelty, safety and immigration violations with plenty of lawsuits from Maine to Iowa. No way I can quote it all, but some highlights:
In 1980, the DeCoster operation was charged with employing five 11-year-olds and a 9-year-old by the Labor department.
Prior to 1993: Even before he built his first large-scale Iowa pig farming operation, Austin J. "Jack" 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
Last night, Rachel Maddow uses this NY Times article about privatized food safety inspections to explicitly lay out the core liberal ideological rationale for regulation:
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