Now that Jack
and son Peter DeCoster have been let off with only three-month prison terms for
running a disgustingly-contaminated monster egg operation in Iowa, a judge has
let an employee off without any prison time.
Tony Wasmund
was sentenced this week to four years of probation, but without any restitution
or fine for his part in bribing government officials.
Thousands of
people were sickened before the government ordered a recall of 550 million
eggs.
Wasmund pleaded guilty in 2012 and provided evidence that helped lead to
the convictions of t he DeCosters.
Here in Canada the two largest egg-producing and egg-grading businesses - L.H. Gr ay and Son Ltd. and Burnbrae Farms Ltd. - continue to market sub-standard eggs without being fined by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Too many of the eggs they label as Grade A are, in fact, cracked, dirty and the wrong size. It's all documented in the results of random-sample checking by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
And the Bureau of Competition Policy continues to sit on its hands, even though it has the transcript of a court decision that outlines a price-fixing deal engineered by Burnbrae and even though it knows there are e-mails between Burnbrae and Gray outlining how they will co-operate on pricing and sharing customers.
Burnbrae and Gray deny any wrongdoing and delay and deflect the pursuit of justice by Svante Lind and his Best Choice Eggs business. Lind's lawsuits are now going into the fifth year.
Lind has also accused the Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board and its general manager, Harry Pelissero, of conspiring to drive him out of business.
Pelissero fined Lind for underpaying levies based on the volume of Grade A eggs; he said Best Choice had a lower percentage of Grade A eggs than Burnbrae and Gray, but new evidence recently released under an Access-to-Information request, indicates the two actually have the same percentage of Grade A eggs as Lind's business did.
Lawyers for Gray and Burnbrae went to court to try to block release of the CFIA information on the percentage of eggs they bought from farmers qualified for Grade A status.
Lind has also accused the Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board and its general manager, Harry Pelissero, of conspiring to drive him out of business.
Pelissero fined Lind for underpaying levies based on the volume of Grade A eggs; he said Best Choice had a lower percentage of Grade A eggs than Burnbrae and Gray, but new evidence recently released under an Access-to-Information request, indicates the two actually have the same percentage of Grade A eggs as Lind's business did.
Lawyers for Gray and Burnbrae went to court to try to block release of the CFIA information on the percentage of eggs they bought from farmers qualified for Grade A status.
