Wright County Egg owner, Austin DeCoster, has become a central figure in one of the largest egg recalls in history. Earlier this month 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.
Political pressure has built, with at least one congressional investigation underway and a hearing on egg safety scheduled for the middle of next month. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, chairwoman of the Appropriations Agriculture Subcommittee, sent a letter Thursday to the heads of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) seeking details on why the public wasn’t warned sooner about the outbreak.
This isn’t the first trouble he has had. DeCoster 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. A spokeswoman for DeCoster said he is working with the FDA on issues related to the eggs recall, but she declined to comment on the various past allegations.
The FDA, which is responsible for the safety of whole eggs, has acknowledged that it had never inspected either set of Iowa facilities.
An Obama administration official said Food and Drug Administration inspectors will visit about 600 large egg farms that produce 80% of the nation’s eggs. This will be the first government effort to inspect large egg farms, as most of them have gone largely uninspected for decades. The inspections will begin in September, the official said.
