State agriculture officials are working to pull the license of a pest control company that treats more than 100 healthcare facilities in Georgia.
At issue is how the company, Biotech Systems of Georgia, applied the pesticide Termindor, says Jim Harron with the State Agriculture department:
"It's not a question of training in the case of Termidor, this material should not have been used indoors--period."
It's only an outdoor product, but Harron’s says his office found it in patient rooms and food areas in all eight of the first nursing homes tested in May.
Since then, officials found discrepancies in records the company sent to the state for review.
Now, with the help of state health care officials, Harron says work is being done to examine other nursing homes handled by Biotech:
"We'll work with the nursing homes in getting them proper cleanup procedures, and getting them advice on how they can clean them up."
Harron says the Georgia Agriculture Department is working towill revoke the company’s license.
Rallies titled "The Campaign to Reform Immigration for America" kicked off in more than 30 dozen cities across the country on Monday.
The group is made up of members of the faith, business and labor communities.
Its aim is to secure the federal votes needed so that millions of undocumented workers get to live inside the law.
State representative Pete Marin of Gwinnett County says granting some type of limited amnesty to undocumented workers means millions can live in the United States without fear of reprisals.
"People are afraid of getting out of their homes. People are afraid of engaging, of volunterism. People are afraid of going to the doctor, of going to the hospital. People are in fear. It is a sad story but I see families being split apart because of this, some of the racial laws that we're having."
Gina Perez is a third year accounting major at Georgia State University. She's got friends and family who are afraid to travel through some parts of the state.
"You know how lately there's been a lot of checkpoints on the road? There's this thing, like the prohibited counties. Cobb, Hall and Whitefield or Gwinnett. You do not go to those counties ‘cause you know if you go those counties and they check you, it's bad. How is it fair the regular police can act as ICE agents. It baffles my mind."
Immigration advocates say previous attempts to reform federal immigration laws under Presidents Regan and Clinton have failed and left undocumented workers with few, if any, constitutional protections.
Shuya Ohno is the national spokesman for the Campaign to Reform Immigration for America.
He describes immigration reform as a political hot potato, which no one wants to touch, until it’s politically advantageous to do so.
"I think a lot of people used it for kind of heated rhetoric more than policy solutions. That's why it became such a hot topic on talk radio and cable TV. Cause it was against the back drop of electoral politics."
It's estimated that five-percent of America's workforce are undocumented. That comes out to about 10 to 12 million people. Advocates say, those workers should be given a chance to work for equal pay, to pay back taxes, even a fine if that's required.
However, those who oppose amnesty of any kind for the undocumented -- including DeKalb County resident Joe Patricia Aaronstein -- say those workers should 'go home, get in line and wait their turn.'
"I'm for immigration that's legal. I've done it. I've lived in other countries. And, I did it the legal way. They should do it legally. They should apply for citizenship. There's a way to enter legally."
The Campaign for Immigration Reform for America hopes to persuade U-S legislators to create an independent commission, one which assesses nationwide labor shortages, including in agriculture.
The Obama administration has signaled that it wants to begin a discussion on comprehensive immigration reform before the end of the year.
Republican gubernatorial candidate John Oxendine says he is returning more than $100,000 in campaign contributions brought into question by a recent investigative report by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The report claims two insurance companies in the state headed by the same person directed $120,000 to Oxendine’s campaign. The paper says money was received from the insurance companies through 10 political action committees set up by an Alabama board member of both firms. Oxendine is Georgia’s Insurance and fire safety commissioner, and was the first Republican to announce his entry into the 2010 governor’s race.
Below is Oxendine's statement released Monday on his website:
"I appreciate all those who have expressed their support these past few days as our campaign has addressed an issue related to contributions made to our campaign.
As it appeared to us, these were not checks from an insurance company we regulate. Additionally, it appeared that these checks were from different entities, not controlled by the same person or people. Under those facts, as we understood them, accepting these contributions was perfectly legal. Based on facts that have recently come to light, previously unknown to us, we have concerns whether our understanding of the facts were complete. Last week, before these facts fully came to light, we filed an advisory opinion request with the Georgia State Ethics Commission.
Out of an abundance of caution, I decided to return the funds pending advice from the State Ethics Commission. Let me be transparent and direct with the taxpayers of Georgia. I have promised to transform Georgia government. Although my staff and legal counsel, Stefan Passantino of McKenna, Long and Aldridge, advise that we have done nothing illegal, based on the facts as we know them, I am concerned Georgia voters might see this as politics as usual. Therefore, last week, immediately after my initial awareness of this matter, I ordered the process be set in motion to return every single contribution in question and to seek advice as to our rights and obligations to the State Ethics Commission.
I have criticized this as a hit piece and the facts are thus: Mr. Passantino communicated via email with the AJC reporter last Friday that they were to speak today. It is unfortunate that the AJC elected to move forward with this piece before having spoken with Mr. Passantino to get our side of the story. Had this occurred, the story would not have been an issue because the AJC would have had the opportunity to report that the money had already been returned and that we had previously initiated a request for guidance and clarification from the State Ethics Commission.
The critics have questioned my personal integrity. I respect each of you as voters. I realize that many Georgians support our campaign and some oppose it. However, I am determined that those who do oppose my campaign, do so based on honorable disagreements on the issues and not based on a question of my integrity as it relates to campaign contributions.
I will run a non-traditional campaign and be a different type of Governor. I hope that today I have taken steps to demonstrate my sincerity to Georgia. It is my desire to have a campaign that is a positive, issue-oriented campaign based on traditional Reagan conservative values.
When reporters cover issues such as campaign contributions as opposed to covering the important issues before Georgia of transportation, education, water, health care, jobs, agriculture, and the Fair Tax, nothing is done to improve the lives of working families in Georgia.
I am pleased this matter is behind us and welcome the opportunity to listen to Georgians about those issues important to them and to talk about my Contract with Georgia."
The Georgia Department of Agriculture is investigating the treatment of horses on Fayette County property owned by Atlanta-area televangelist the Rev. Creflo Dollar, who doesn't own the horses. A family friend, Jason Mitchell, bought the horses, saying they would be kept on Dollar's property. Records show the horses had no water or dirty water, weren't fed properly and had body weights dropping to dangerous levels. State inspectors say one of the horses died because the owners failed to feed it and several other horses. Mitchell has been cited for inhumane treatment of animals. A spokesman for Dollar says the minister was not involved in their care.
South Carolina lawmakers will consider a bill this week aimed at giving the state tighter control and more information about people drawing water from the state's rivers. The South Carolina Senate Agriculture Committee is scheduled to take up a bill that would require permits for anyone drawing water from the state's rivers. South Carolina is suing North Carolina over water rights and negotiating that issue with Georgia. Under current state law, South Carolina only requires permits for businesses and others that discharge water into rivers and registers people who pull water from them. The state also has drought laws that can shut down or restrictriver uses.
The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta says Americans did not suffer more food poisoning in 2008, despite high-profile cases like the peanut butter salmonella outbreak linked to a south Georgia plant. But a new CDC study also warns that Georgia and a handful of other states have made little—if any-progress in food safety over the past four years.
The study’s key statement is this: The U.S. has "reached a plateau in the prevention of food-borne disease." It calls for new efforts to make food safer from the farm to the table.
The CDC’s study looked at 10 states, including Georgia. It showed the number of food-borne infections declining over the past decade. But, by 2004 they leveled-off. And Georgia in particular has the second-highest rate of salmonella among the 10 states.
That’s due in part to the latest salmonella outbreak at a peanut plant in Blakely, which sickened nearly 700 people nationwide.
State lawmakers answered that alarm in the just-completed legislative session by overwhelmingly passing a bill to toughen food safety rules and regulations. State Republican Senator John Bulloch says the bill he co-sponsored is a good start:
"The tools that we put in place for the Dept of Agriculture is a great improvement over what they had before. Do the things need to be changed?...we don’t know. It may be that next year we need to come back as we see how these new changes have been implemented and what results they have, and maybe there are some other things that need to be changed."
Bulloch says changes already made within the state’s Agriculture Department include an additional five food inspectors in the field, with three of those positions newly-created by the Legislature.
But Bulloch also points out that Georgia should not be taking all the blame for failures in the inspection pipeline:
"At what point does the Food and Drug Administration…where’s their responsibilities? Have they done and have been doing a good job? And I’d say no, they need to change their rules and regulations."
Federal food safety officials say they’re using new tools in an aggressive approach toward reducing food-contamination.
Here in Georgia, Bulloch believes things will get better:
"I would say that going forward, the consuming public should have a higher level of confidence that the products that go to the grocery shelf would be from a Georgia-facility would be by far safer than it could have been in the past."
The federal stimulus is shoring-up some East Georgia dams. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsak said Monday, his Department will spend about $6 million from the recovery package to fix six dams, three each in Jackson and Madison Counties, near Athens.
"Many dams and important flood control structures across the country are in a race against time when it comes to their ability to protect people and property from flooding," Vilsak said. "This funding is going to projects to avoid the risk of infrastruce failure and the threat that would represent to life and property."
The dams in question include those on the Sandy, Little Sandy and Marbury Creeks and on the South River. Vilsak says, the projects will create 168 jobs, protect 216residents and pump $14 million into the economy. In total, 11 states are getting $45 million in stimulus funds to rehabilitate aging dams. The state of Georgia is kicking in about $3 million for the Georgia projects.
In response to the recent salmonella outbreak in peanut products, the Georgia House passed a bill allowing the State Agriculture Commission to deputize county and city health workers to inspect food processing plants.
One of the big complaints from the state Agriculture commission is that they may have missed the signs because they don't have enough food safety inspectors. HB 381 would allow the state to commission local health inspectors to poke around the approximately five hundred fifty food manufacturers. Republican Representative Terry England of Auburn says these local health workers would only visit facilities.
"They’re not allowed at any point to shut an operation down, but if they find something suspicious they are to notify the department of agriculture."
The bill does not lay out how these local workers will be trained to spot defects at manufacturing plants. These local inspectors would also need to know if a food processor is violating federal rules and report those concerns to federal authorities. The salmonella outbreak is blamed for nine deaths.
The state Agriculture Department is saying it has found nine “extremely emaciated” horses at a Jonesboro farm.
A department spokesman said two dead horses were found on the farm yesterday.
Officials found the farm Tuesday. They had received numerous calls about skinny horses at the farm. It belongs to Dr. Phillip Breaton. Inspectors returned to the farm with a veterinarian a day later.
The horses have been moved to state stables in Newton County. A spokesman for the Agriculture Department says they are expected to recover.
Ten other horses were left on the property. They were considered to be in better condition than the others. Officials left written instructions on how to care for them.
State Agriculture officials have taken-in more than 130 dogs from a north Georgia kennel, citing unsanitary and unsafe conditions. The Atlanta Humane Society has accepted the dogs, and officials say most appear healthy and well-fed. The investigation of Richard’s Kennel near Cumming began after a customer complaint of a dog that had mange. Testing at the site however, revealed none of the kennel’s animals had the skin disease.
Tight state budgets have led some of the biggest farm states to leave dozens of food inspection jobs vacant at a time when hundreds have been sickened by a nationwide salmonella outbreak tied to a filthy peanut processing plant. Georgia, the site of the plant, has about 60 inspectors for some 16,000 sites, while budget cuts have forced the state agriculture department to keep 15 inspector positions vacant. California, Texas and Florida are among other states facing the same problems while food experts say the federal government relies increasingly on states to monitor the nation's food supply.
"You can only shift the pawns on the table so many times before the game catches up with you," Georgia deputy Agriculture Commissioner Oscar Garrison told legislators earlier this month while asking for more money to hire inspectors.
The salmonella outbreak linked to Peanut Corp. of America has sickened hundreds, may have caused nine deaths and prompted one of the largest food recalls in the nation's history. Federal investigators have launched a criminal investigation, and Virginia-based Peanut Corp. faces mounting lawsuits and a bankruptcy filing. Food safety experts warn each loss of an inspector increases the possibility that food problems could elude detection. In the Georgia salmonella case, a state inspector found only minor problems when she probed the Blakely plant in October for less than two hours; less than three months later federal agents found roaches, mold, a leaking roof and other problems. Almost every state legislature in the country is staring down budget deficits and scraping funds for schools, roads and other public safety areas, like prisons and police. Food safety is a tough sell.
"It's getting pretty dire out there," said Doug Farquhar, an analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures. "With the salmonella scare, you'd think that now would be the time they'd say we need to invest in food safety. But the opposite is going on."
The belt-tightening comes at an inconvenient time.
The federal government increasingly relies on food safety inspections performed by states, where budgets for inspections have remained stagnant and overburdened officials have less training than their federal counterparts.
For officials in Georgia, the deadly outbreak has led to some soul searching. Legislators have floated proposals to deputize county health officials so they can quickly pursue food safety tips. And Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin said his department will focus more on food safety inspections and less on other duties, such as monitoring out-of-date foods. Leading lawmakers say they hope to boost inspections, despite budget cuts.
Inspectors are "referees of the food game," said Joseph Hotchkiss, a food science professor at Cornell University who once worked for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "There's no way for us as individuals to know much about our food — how it's manufactured and prepared — without these people we hire. And with fewer of those people, that could in general result in an increased risk."
(AP)
Click here for more GPB News coverage about the effects of the salmonella outbreak in Georgia.
A key first victory for legislation aimed at food safety in Georgia crossed a hurdle Wednesday. The state Senate Agriculture Committee voted unanimously for the plan to require food makers to alert state inspectors within 24 hours if initial testing from a plant shows its products are contaminated. The bill also calls for testing by companies at least once-a-year—that would supplement surprise state and federal inspections. All of this is in response to the salmonella outbreak linked to the Blakely peanut plant. The full state Senate will now look at the measure.
From school lunches to nutrition bars and ice cream, the nationwide salmonella outbreak has reached deep into the American food supply — even though many people had never heard of the small company at the center of the investigation until a few weeks ago.
The food manufacturer, Peanut Corp. of America, has just a few plants scattered across the South, but it may be responsible for one of the nation's largest food recalls in history.
Federal investigators on Friday said the Lynchburg, Va.-based company knowingly shipped salmonella-laced products from its Blakely, Ga., plant after tests showed the products were contaminated. Federal law forbids producing or shipping foods under conditions that could make it harmful to consumers' health.
So far, the salmonella outbreak has sickened about 575 people in 43 states and may have contributed to at least eight deaths. The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation and more than 1,550 products have been recalled.
The company has denied any wrongdoing, but said it is investigating.
Before the scandal, Peanut Corp. was a little-known but ambitious company that began in the 1970s as a family catering operation.
"We started this business working out of our house in Virginia with my mom doing all the accounting," company president Stewart Parnell had been quoted on the company's Web site.
The peanut processing business grew over the years. The company bought a plant in Georgia in 2001, opened another in Texas four years later, and was also running a plant in Virginia.
Friends and business associates said Parnell was dedicated.
"He certainly has gone out and done some things on his own — he didn't just lay around. He's been aggressive," said Eddie Marks, who runs a Virginia storage company and has known Parnell for 15 years.
But even as the company expanded and began to process millions of pounds of peanuts per month, its headquarters was still a two-story building behind Parnell's house. He even had his own brand of peanut products: "Parnell's Pride."
Belying the ambition, there were problems.
About nine months after Parnell bought the Georgia plant in 2001, potential insecticide contamination and dead insects were found near peanuts inspected by the Food and Drug Administration.
More recently, state inspections in 2006 and 2007 found some sanitary problems. After another inspection in October, state officials discovered only relatively minor violations.
But less than three months later, a federal investigation found roaches, mold and other unsanitary conditions.
The potential repercussions began to emerge. The Agriculture Department said it may have shipped possibly contaminated peanut butter and other foods to free school lunch programs in California, Minnesota and Idaho in 2007. The Federal Emergency Management Agency acknowledged that it distributed meals to disaster victims that may have included the potentially tainted peanut butter.
And it was discovered that the company's Plainview, Texas, plant didn't register with state health officials there after opening in March 2005 and only recently was discovered and inspected.
However, the most serious issue surfaced in inspection records released Friday by the Food and Drug Administration. The reports showed that in 2007 the company shipped chopped peanuts on July 18 and 24 after salmonella was confirmed by private lab tests.
FDA officials earlier had said Peanut Corp. waited for a second test to clear peanut butter and peanuts that initially tested positive for salmonella. But the agency amended its report, noting that the Georgia plant actually shipped some products before receiving the second test and sold others even after confirming salmonella.
A Peanut Corp. lawyer said the company is investigating and had no comment on the latest FDA findings. The company previously said it "categorically denies any allegations" that it sought lab results that would put its products in a favorable light.
Details of the privately held company have been slow to turn up, and what has come out hasn't been from Parnell. He has repeatedly declined to speak to reporters.
Parnell's friends and business partners described him as a hardworking, soft-spoken man who had a good rapport with the dozens of contacts he made over the years.
"He had a good reputation," said Jeffrey Pope, a peanut farmer who has done business with Parnell's Virginia plant. "People respected him. He's been in the industry for more than 30 years and he's been a mainstay."
Southwest Georgia peanut industry officials say Parnell didn't spend much time in the state, instead leaving the day-to-day dealings to others.
His reputation earned him a vaunted spot on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Peanut Standards Board, which is charged with helping the government establish quality and handling standards for the nation's peanuts.
But several board members said they were unaware Parnell was on the panel, and some said the board rarely met. When they did, it was often by teleconference.
Parnell was removed from the board Thursday by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Peanut Corp. was suspended from participating in government contract programs for at least a year.
The company has said in statements that it is deeply concerned.
"The product recalls issued by our company continue to expeditiously remove all potentially harmful products from the marketplace, in the best interest of the public's health and safety," a statement midweek said.
(AP)
Click here for more GPB News coverage of this story.
Governor Sonny Perdue on Wednesday said a “sacred trust,” was broken between the Peanut Corporation of America and consumers over the spreading salmonella debacle at the company’s Blakely plant.
Perdue and state agriculture officials are circling the peanut wagons and throwing their full backing behind Georgia’s farmers, food producers and distributors.
Governor Sonny Perdue makes a point to the several hundred industry leaders, farmers and legislators at the Georgia Agribusiness Council State Legislative Breakfast, held in downtown Atlanta on Feb. 4, 2009. (Photo: Dave Bender)
At a Georgia Agribusiness Council State Legislative Breakfast, Perdue told several hundred industry leaders:
“When people violate that sacred chain of food safety control, they will be prosecuted and held accountable; it is too important not to…(applause)”
Perdue faced a room packed with a veritable roll-call of food and ag industry officials.
Many worry that the an spreading peanut recall could prompt an already uncertain public could shun other preach-state-grown-and-produced foods.
Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin, says his department will reorganize to face the daunting task of better monitoring farms and factories across the state:
”Our inspectors have 16,000 facilities they have to inspect. You have to do that today with 60 employees – it’s impossible to give the necessary coverage that, apparently, we need.”
Irvin says his office will ask the legislature to establish a division to deal exclusively with checking processed foods.
The General Assembly is already mulling a mandatory food-testing bill.
Perdue, however, says no amount of externally-enforced inspections can replace a responsible food industry:
“In the food chain, there is a voluntary compliance: we share a sacred trust of safety among our producers, processors, preparers and servers of food – and you cannot be everywhere at one time.”
House Speaker Bill Richardson holds up a bag of Georgia peanuts, during his comments at the Georgia Agribusiness Council State Legislative Breakfast, held in downtown Atlanta on Feb. 4, 2009. (Photo: Dave Bender)
To make a point of that trust, House Speaker Glenn Richardson held up a small bag of Georgia peanuts as he stood behind the podium:
"One of the fringe benefits of being at the capitol, is [that] the Department of Agriculture brings these Georgia peanuts by (opens foil packet); they leave them at our office. And everybody that comes to our office loves these, and you know what?… (eants a few peanuts) I love Georgia peanuts. (applause).”
And those Georgia peanuts make up almost half of all peanuts used in the United States.
Click here for more GPB News coverage of the salmonella-tainted peanut products.
Georgia’s top elected officials will mingle with leaders of the state’s agriculture industry this morning in Atlanta. The occasion is the annual breakfast of the Georgia Agribusiness Council. But this year, a hot topic of discussion is expected to be the salmonella outbreak linked to a southwest Georgia peanut processing plant. Governor Sonny Perdue is scheduled to speak at the event and make his first public comments on the matter. Other officials on-hand this morning include Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle and Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin.
Other news concerning the peanut plant--The Georgia Bureau of Investigation will meet with federal officials involved with the criminal investigation into the plant and the owner—Peanut Corporation of America. Governor Perdue has called-on the GBI to review whether any state laws were broken.
The Georgia General Assembly is considering a bill that would require mandatory testing for harmful pathogens at food warehouses, manufacturing plants and "food sales establishments."
All test results would be sent to state officials.
Similar plans have been floated before, mainly by critics of the current food safety system. Generally, those proposals follow large scale outbreaks and huge recalls.
Each time, the food and agricultural industry, even in the height of "crisis," have fought back mandatory testing.
And making those results public by forking them over to state officials has been a non starter.
Large firms have argued the measures aren't necessary as testing protocol often already exists. Small firms and family run operations have successfully lobbied against similar measures in California, telling lawmakers the tests will cut their bottom line.
So it's a big deal when Georgia looks to become a leader in food testing regulations.
"It's a great first step," said lawyer Bill Marler. He's suing the company at the center of the recent outbreak of salmonella in peanut products."Not perfect, not enough, but a start" Marler wrote on his blog.
The bill would give the Georgia Agricultural Commissioner the power to set up the specific guidelines. Tests would need to happen once a year, at minimum.
So far eight deaths have been attributed to the tainted peanut products.
“When people’s lives are at stake, food safety inspections should not be subject to lax regulations,” said Republican Sen. John Bulloch, who introduced the legislation.
“Consumers must be assured their food is safe and we must protect the integrity of Georgia’s producers. Much of our economy depends on the state’s agriculture industry, which cannot afford to suffer the negative impacts of food recalls.”
Salmonella contaminated peanut butter may have entered the National School Lunch Program.
The US department of Agriculture says schools in California, Idaho and Minnesota received products on the rapidly expanding recall list.
Federal officials have sourced the salmonella outbreak to the peanut corporation of America in Blakely. It’s now under federal Criminal investigation because officials say company records show the plant knew of the potential problem last year. Peanut butter tested positive for salmonella at least 12 times in 2007, but was distributed after it was retested and cleared.
The USDA believes most of the recalled food has been consumed.
Federal health officials say the Blakely peanut plant at the center of the salmonella outbreak had internal data that showed salmonella bacteria as far back as 2007. Plant officials were not required by law to share the information. Now state lawmakers want to change that.
Federal officials apparently evoked homeland security law in order to get access to internal plant documents at the Peanut Corporation of America Blakely facility. They revealed that routing quick tests on several occasions showed the presence of salmonella bacteria. Oscar Garrison with the Georgia Department of agriculture says current law does not require companies to share such information with state investigators.
"Companies want to do testing and we don’t want to discourage internal testing. But if they do the testing, which we won't require them to do, then they need to make those results available to us- particularly when they find excessive problems."
As a result, state lawmakers are currently drafting a bill that would require companies to hand over internal test results to public inspectors. Meanwhile FDA officials have left the plant in blakely and moved on to the companies Virginia.
A day after Georgia agriculture officials made public its inspection reports of a Blakely peanut butter plant, officials from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration weighed-in with its findings. The FDA says 12 times in the last two years the plant found evidence of salmonella contamination, but still sold its product after an outside lab determined it was safe. Federal health officials also say more than one salmonella strain has been identified from the southwest Georgia plant, owned by Peanut Corporation of America. The company in a statement says it has fully cooperated with the investigation. More than 300 products containing peanut butter have been recalled nationwide. More than 500 people have been sickened, with possibly eight deaths linked to the outbreak. Today at the State Capitol, the Georgia House Agriculture and Consumer Affairs committee will meet to discuss the Blakely-plant outbreak.
State Agriculture reports show the Blakely peanut butter plant at the center of a salmonella investigation has a history of sanitation problems. Records indicate the southwest Georgia processing plant had been cited for cleanliness issues in 2006 and ’07. Inspection reports from last year showed similar and other problems. And the now-closed plant during two routine inspections last year showed no indications of samples having been taken for salmonella testing. The salmonella outbreak has sickened 500 people and been linked to seven deaths. More than 125 products have been recalled nationwide.
