DENVER POST

January 14, 2012

Jensen Farms owner fined for renting unclean motel rooms to migrants

By Jennifer Brown

The Denver Post

The owner of a Colorado cantaloupe farm linked to a listeria outbreak that caused 30 deaths is now in trouble with another federal agency, this time for allegedly housing migrant workers in a dirty and neglected motel.

Eric Jensen, owner of Jensen Farms near Holly, was fined $4,250 by the U.S. Department of Labor after federal authorities found he rented unsanitary rooms to migrant workers. The rooms were overcrowded and had no beds and no windows that opened, the department said Thursday.

Jensen owns the Gateway Motel, which is not open to the public, and rented rooms to migrant workers for about $25 a week. None of the workers living in the motel rooms worked at the cantaloupe farm, a woman who answered the phone at Jensen Farms told The Denver Post.

"Not one of the Jensen employees stayed at that place," said the woman, who declined to give her full name. "They are not our workers."

The motel is not connected to the farm, she said.

"Eric does that on his own. That's his own personal thing. It has nothing to do with Jensen Farms," she said.

Jensen co-owns the farm with his brother, Ryan. Attorneys for the farm did not return calls seeking comment. Neither did Eric Jensen.

Jensen had claimed he was exempt from a federal law that stipulates acceptable living conditions for migrant workers because he was an innkeeper. But the federal investigation revealed the motel is not open to the public, is closed most of the year and has no telephone number that prospective guests could call to rent a room.

Investigators from the Food and Drug Administration cited a long list of sanitation lapses at the farm in October, after determining that melons shipped from there were sickening and killing people across the country. The farm used a potato sorter not clean enough for cantaloupe, which, unlike potatoes, are eaten raw. Also, the farm packed warm melons directly into boxes that were then refrigerated, which could produce condensation that promotes growth of listeria bacteria, investigators found.

Federal authorities did not say whether the FDA's investigation of the farm or an unrelated complaint led to an inquiry by the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division.

The motel rooms Jensen rented had no smoke detectors or laundry facilities and were "unsanitary," all in violation of the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act.

"Profiting at the expense of vulnerable workers is not just inhumane, it's illegal," said Chad Frasier, the Wage and Hour Division's district director in Denver.

Farmworker Justice president Bruce Goldstein said farms that house workers in unsanitary conditions are more likely to use unsanitary farming practices in general.

"Unsafe conditions for farmers in the field will mean unsafe produce for consumers in the supermarket," said Goldstein, whose advocacy organization helps farmworkers improve their wages and working conditions.