060105 Meat Distributor Admits Trying to Trick MexicoJanuary 17, 2006The owner of a San Antonio wholesale distributor of meat and poultry products pleaded guilty to charges his company tried to bypass Mexico's ban in 2002 on chicken originating in Texas by misrepresenting that about 35,000 pounds of frozen chicken leg quarters came from another state that was not part of the ban. The ban was implemented in response to the appearance of exotic Newcastle disease, a type of bird flu, in some chickens raised in Texas. During a hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Pamela Mathy, Allen Jackson Hausman pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of violating the federal Poultry Products Protection Act. He also entered a guilty plea to the same counts on behalf of his company, Almacenes de Tejas, L.P., which does business as ADT. As part of a plea deal, Hausman and ADT agreed to pay a $40,000 fine and he will get probation instead of one year in jail — the maximum under the law, according to Hausman's lawyer. Mathy scheduled sentencing for Jan. 25. Specifically, the company tried to export 858 cases, each case weighing about 40 pounds, of frozen chicken leg quarters into Mexico, court records show. "Mexico didn't want it because of health concerns," Assistant U.S. Attorney Charlie Jenkins said. "It could have been a political, economic problem." Hausman's lawyer, Rusty Guyer, said the chicken was "fit for consumption by anyone here." "It was an economic thing, not a health safety thing," Guyer said. The 858 cases in question were from a Texas producer but the original labels were removed and replaced with labels stamped with a federal mark of inspection for an Alabama producer, according to court records. On June 28, 2002, agents with the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspected the cases at the ADT warehouse and found the chicken had been purchased from a producer in Dallas, agent Eduardo Vendrell said in an affidavit. The agents ordered the chicken impounded, which would have cost the company money, so ADT destroyed it, authorities said.
E-mail: sflanagan@sprintmail.com |
