BONITA DAILY NEWS February 27, 2006
Agriculture dept. refuses settlement offer
In a letter Feb. 20, David Young, senior attorney with the Office of General Counsel, turned down the grower's offer, saying the case would be referred to the Division of Administrative Hearings today. That would put the decision about how much Ag-Mart would pay for its alleged violations in the hands of an administrative law judge. In a follow-up letter, Ag-Mart's attorney David Stefany requested another meeting with Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services officials to continue discussions of a settlement. But the department declined. "We've taken the position that it's time to move on with the case," said Terry McElroy, a Department of Agriculture spokesman. "Of course, they are not prohibited from making another offer, either before it goes to the Division of Administrative Hearings or even while it's pending there." He said Ag-Mart offered to pay the department $25,000, less than a quarter of the record fine it faces in Florida. The violations it is charged with carry a $111,200 fine. Greg Schell, managing attorney at the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project in Lake Worth who is representing a group of Ag-Mart workers that claim they've been sprayed with pesticides, said he expected the company to try to bargain down the fine. "If I could pay my mortgage company 25 cents on the dollar I would take it," he said. In October, state Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson filed two administrative complaints against Ag-Mart and four of its employees after department officials spent months looking over company records. The department launched a probe into Ag-Mart nearly a year ago after three families that worked for the company had children with birth defects. One baby was born without arms and legs. Another baby had a deformed jaw, and a third died a few days after birth and was so deformed it was difficult to determine the sex. In its investigation, the agriculture department worked closely with Collier County Health Department officials, who four months ago found pesticides were unlikely to blame for the abnormalities in the babies. The mothers lived in the same labor camp in Immokalee when they became pregnant. Ag-Mart filed an appeal challenging most of the alleged violations. After the company filed the appeal, department officials agreed to a meeting to hear its side. Leo Bottary, a spokesman for Ag-Mart, said the company asked for a second meeting to try to clear up the confusion that still surrounds the alleged violations. "We've maintained all along that it's a misrepresentation of data that we voluntarily supplied to the state of Florida and it was basically used to reach erroneous conclusions," he said. Most of the alleged violations involve allowing workers to re-enter fields too soon after pesticides have been sprayed. Bottary wouldn't discuss Ag-Mart's settlement proposal. He said the company questions whether one is even necessary because it maintains the alleged violations are based on data that has been misinterpreted. "I think it's much more of a discussion about coming to an agreement on the findings at this point," Bottary said. He said Ag-Mart still believes there's a chance of reaching an agreement with the department before the case is taken up by an administrative law judge. In North Carolina, the company also faces $184,500 in fines for alleged pesticide violations, the largest in that state's history. Ag-Mart has been accused of 369 pesticide violations in North Carolina. Most involve worker safety, including allowing workers to re-enter fields too soon after pesticide applications and applying one of its most dangerous pesticides too often. Bottary said talks in North Carolina are "progressing well." He said an agreement could be reached in the next few weeks. Any settlement must be approved by the state's pesticide board. Ag-Mart sells its grape tomatoes throughout the United States under the name Santa Sweets. Pesticide concerns have led some retailers, including Wal-Mart and Sam's Club, to remove the tomatoes from their shelves. That's incentive enough for Ag-Mart to resolve the cases quickly, Schell said. His group may consider legal action of its own if it's not satisfied the company has changed its ways, he said. Since the babies of three of its workers were born deformed, Ag-Mart has eliminated all conventional agricultural chemicals that can create a danger of birth defects for workers. "Ag-Mart says they are doing things better," Schell said. "So we're going to talk."
|