The Agribusiness Examiner January 4, 2004, Issue #315
Revisiting ADM's Corn Gluten Feed Scandal Raises "Mad Cow" Disease Feed Questions Reprinted from Issue #102, January 19, 2001 In light of the recent Food and Drug Administration's report that a large numbers of companies involved in manufacturing animal feed are not complying with regulations meant to prevent the emergence of the dreaded "mad cow" disease a little noticed story that emerged during the Archer Daniels Midland lysine price-fixing scandal takes on added significance. When Mark Whitacre, who served as a corporate mole for the FBI and brought the Department of Justice's attention to the scandal, was interviewed by FBI agents Michael D. Bassett and Anthony P. D'Angelo in a September 5, 1999 meeting, following the Department's procedure the agents prepared an FBI-302 dictated the following day and transcribed on September 7, totaling 16 pages. On page 15 the agents wrote: "Whitacre advised that ADM has illegally disposed of genetic organisms by adding the organisms to corn glutten feed. The organisms are in liquid form and are sprayed on the corn glutten feed rather than disposed of as required by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The liquid spray also added weight to the feed. Whitacre advised that Jerry Weigel and Jim Randall oversee this activity." Weigel was ADM's head nutritionist at ADM Biochem and Randall was the corporate president and overseer of plant process and operations. No action, however, has been taken on Whitacre's revelation. In an October 15, 1999 letter from David Hoech, founder of the ADM Stockholder's Watch Committee, to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, the company stockholder activist expresses shock that the Department of Justice had chosen "to overlook" such activities "leaving the Andreas crime boss, Dwayne [Dwayne O. Andreas, the then CEO and chairman of ADM's board], intact to continue to destroy American agriculture." "The creed of greed of the Andreas crime family," Hoech charged, "found it more economical to export the poisonous waste rather than build a treatment facility." Hoech called Reno's attention to the remarks of a French farmer Philippe Huesele, a member of the Agro-Brie-Champagne farmer's cooperative in northeastern France. On a summer tour of the Central Illinois farm belt Huesele remarked that the European public still equates traditional farming practices with quality, largely because of "mad cow" disease among British cattle herds several years ago. The Europeans blame American feed for the disease, he said. They mistrust large corporations. It was the British scientists who isolated animal feed contaminated with meat and bone meal from cattle and other slaughtered animals as the probable cause for BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathies or "mad cow" disease) and hypothesized that humans who ate contaminated meat had contracted the fatal CJD (Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease --- BSE's human equivalent). "As a shareholder and American citizen," Hoech's letter continues, "I demand to know why the public safety is compromised to protect the Andreas crime family. Our overseas' customers don't trust our regulatory departments in this administration and most of all don't trust the Justice Department who lets corporate criminals such as ADM run amok destroying what took our ancestors decades to build." "Do we know that ADM feed shipped to Europe caused the `mad-cow' disease?" the letter asks. "No, we don't, but the Europeans said it was caused by feed containing a prion. The genetic organisms mixed with the feed is a dead protein which is a prion that was found in all the feed which the diseased cows consumed." A prion (pronounced PREE-on) is a deformed protein identified by biologist Stanley Prusiner as the likely infectious agent responsible for causing and transmitting transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (BSE) . The word "prion" is a hybrid of "protein" and "infectious." In a subsequent law suit filed by a Missouri farmer Rodger Moberly and several other Missouri cattlemen the focus was on a substance known as free gossypol, which is derived from crushing cottonseed and used in ADM's animal feed known as 39% Protein Quanah Special. As Nicholas E. Hollis, President of the Agribusiness Council (ABC) explains, "free gossypol can be toxic to calves and even larger cattle if ingested in sufficient qualities. Often gossypol sickens an animal slowing down its ability to gain weight." The plaintiff's claims were enhanced by an affidavit from Whitacre, ADM's former head of its BioProducts Division, who stated that ADM knew about free gossypol's effects and intentionally sold it to enhance profits. The affidavit also repeated the charge concerning ADM's spraying biomass residues on its corn glutten feed. Knowing that these charges would constitute serious fraud if proven the plaintiff's lawyers were prepared to depose CEO Andreas, his son Michael and James Randall, who was the company's president. In ADM's lysine price fixing case the government granted immunity to both Dwayne Andreas and Randall. In the Missouri suit ADM, however, decided to avoid such a confrontation and settled out of court, offering the plaintiff $105,000 --- roughly double the amount initially requested. Interestingly in the preparing of the Missouri case ADM called upon experts from the nearby University of Illinois to challenge the plaintiffs veterinarians who had treated the dying animals. As Hollis points out, ADM over the years had funneled millions of dollars in grants to the university's College of Agriculture. "Truth can be difficult to tease out strand by strand in these cases," Hollis adds, "but ADM's credibility plunged when its top nutritionist `Dr.' Gerrald Weigel , lied about his academic credentials under oath --- he had no Ph. D." Oklahoma State University toxicologist Dr. Sandra Morgan has noted concern for gossypol as a potential sterility agent in an article which also states "there is concern for the effects of gossypol on humans because gossypol is a biologically active compound and because gossypol in the food chain may ultimately lead to its consumption by humans." "If we are to regain confidence in the overwhelming majority of our food companies and their honest suppliers," Hollis adds, "isn't it time we stop ignoring the lessons of Moberly v. ADM and get the truth out about the Supermarkup to the World?" 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