Agriprocessors In Postville: Bad News

- Agriprocessors Are Bad Corporate Citizens -
Bad Managers Plus Illegal Workers
Equals = BAD PRODUCT

Polluters
AUGUST 2006: The company agrees to pay $603,086 to settle a complaint by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Federal prosecutors had accused the owners of discharging pollutants into Postville's city water treatment system.

Unsanitary
SEPTEMBER 2006: The U.S. Department of Agriculture issues a "letter of warning" to the plant, based on failure to meet minimum requirements for sanitary conditions. Rodents had been seen in offices, and other unsanitary conditions were noted outside the plant. The letter noted multiple instances of unsanitary conditions that had gone uncorrected over the previous 90 days.

Food Contamination
DECEMBER 2006: USDA inspectors find fecal contamination of chickens being processed. In one case, an inspector has to intervene three times to correct the problem. A day later, an inspector finds that about half the chickens he observes being processed are contaminated with feces and bile. A week later, inspectors note that at least 70 percent of the chickens are contaminated with feces. Two days later, inspectors report finding two pallets of beef that had "a rancid smell and (were) slimy to the touch." Hydraulic oil is seen dripping from an overhead motor onto raw chickens being processed. A few days later, inspectors see the same problem.

JANUARY 2007: USDA inspectors find "a large amount of fecal and bile contamination" on chickens being processed. Three areas are deemed "out of compliance, with fecal material sprayed everywhere around them." An inspector halts the meat-processing line and raises the issue with a worker who wanted to restart the line without taking corrective action.
JANUARY 2007: The USDA announces that Agriprocessors is recalling 2,700 pounds of frankfurters because of possible underprocessing.

Product Mislabeling
JULY 2007: The USDA announces that Agriprocessors is recalling 35,860 pounds of frozen beef and chicken products because they may contain egg albumen, a known allergen, which is not declared on the label.

Violations of Safety Rules
MARCH 2008: The Iowa Division of Labor Services cites Agriprocessors for 39 violations of workplace safety rules and proposes a $182,000 fine. The sanctions are based on inspections that took place in October 2007 and February 2008. Inspectors say the violations relate to hazardous chemicals and inadequate emergency response plans. Federal officials put the case "on hold," according to Kerry Koonce of Iowa Workforce Development. As of Tuesday, the matter remained unresolved.
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Illegals immigration Iowa ICE

Einstein - The Absent Minded Professor Revealed...

Auctioned Letter Reveals Einstein Was Conflicted

An Anti-Semitic Jew and a Religious Bigot

"Science without religion is lame,
religion without science is blind" - Albert Einstein

The German-language letter is being sold Thursday by Bloomsbury Auctions in Mayfair after being in a private collection for more than 50 years, said the auction house's managing director Rupert Powell.

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions," he said.

"And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people."

And he added: "As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

Previously the great scientist's comments on religion -- such as "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind" -- have been the subject of much debate, used notably to back up arguments in favour of faith.
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Einstein Science Religion

Immigration Raids In Postville Iowa

ICE Raids Meatpacking Plant - Up To 700 Arrests
Drugs, Abused Workers And Violations Of Iowa's Minimum Wage Law

Note: The Postville Agriprocessors plant is known as the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse and is northeast Iowa’s largest employer. The raid targeted people who illegally used other people's Social Security numbers and were in the U.S. illegally.

A total of 16 local, state and federal agencies, led by ICE, joined the investigation that began last October. Among them was the U.S. Marshals Service, the Iowa Department of Public Safety, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, the Waterloo Police Department and the Postville Police Department.

According to search warrants, ICE agents interviewed a former plant supervisor – identified as “Source 1” – in November 2007, who told them that the plant employed foreign nationals from Mexico, Guatemala and Eastern Europe. Roughly 80 percent of those workers were living illegally in the U.S., the supervisor said.

“Source 1” told federal agents that some employees were running a methamphetamine lab in the plant, and were bringing weapons to work. The supervisor confronted a higher-level manager about the drugs, and shortly after was fired.

A plant employee identified as “Source 11” told authorities that he/she was hired without presenting employment documents or filling out any forms. The worker’s first paycheck had a different person’s name on it, which was then cashed at another part of the plant.

Undocumented workers were paid $5 an hour for their first three or four months on the job, the employee said, and then received a salary increase to $6 per hour.
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Illegals immigration Iowa ICE

Smoking Ban At Iowa Prisions

Iowa Prisons Tobacco-Free January 1, 2009
Ban Includes All Correctional Facilities

Prison officials are concerned about rising health care costs for inmates and believe banning smoking will help reduce those bills, said Fred Scaletta, prison spokesman.

Jan. 1 next year has been tentatively scheduled as the tobacco-quitting date. The ban will cover every correctional facility, including cellhouses and prison yards. Smoking-cessation classes will be offered to inmates to help ease the transition. Correctional officers who need a nicotine break will have to step outside their prison's front door.

Tobacco historically has been an important part of inmate culture. In the past decade, however, there has been a trend toward eliminating smoking in the nation's prisons.

Three of Iowa's prisons - at Clarinda, Oakdale and Mount Pleasant - already prohibit all tobacco use. Smoking is allowed in the prison yards at Fort Madison, Anamosa, Fort Dodge, Rockwell City, Newton and Mitchellville.
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Tobacco Smoke Free Prison Iowa

More On The Tuskegee Study

A Story Of Doctors Who Lacked Ethics
In Public Health Service Study
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male also known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Pelkola Syphilis Study, Public Health Service Syphilis Study or the Tuskegee Experiment was a clinical study, conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama, in which 399 poor — and mostly illiterate — African American sharecroppers, who already suffered from syphilis, were studied to observe the natural progression of the disease if left untreated.

This study was criticized because it was conducted without due care to its subjects, and led to major changes in how patients are protected in clinical studies. Individuals enrolled in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study did not give informed consent and were not informed of their diagnosis; instead they were told they had "bad blood" and could receive free medical treatment, rides to the clinic, meals and burial insurance in case of death in return for participating.

In 1932, when the study started, standard treatments for syphilis were toxic, dangerous, and of questionable effectiveness. Part of the original goal of the study was to determine if patients were better off not being treated with these toxic remedies. Doctors recruited 399 black men who already had syphilis, to study the progress of the disease over the course of 40 years. A control group of 201 healthy men was studied to provide a comparison.
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Blacks Tuskegee African American