When I visited, DeCoster was already controversial, and after my visit I wrote this story.
DeCoster dried it and sold it to farmers who spread it on fields to fertilize the crops.
DeCoster took me in an older barn, which stretched out seemingly the length of a football field.
Maybe DeCoster, who has a history of various types of violations at his agribusinesses, will get in trouble.
But, following up on comments of FDA inspectors, authorities learned that this lender, Austin (Jack) DeCoster, was not so silent.
Meanwhile, DeCoster's involvement in Ohio Fresh Eggs was hidden from public view.
DeCoster then took me into a newer barn, a more modern facility.
So Ohio Fresh Eggs, backed by DeCoster and with a close associate of his (not Bethel) now at the helm, is still operating.
While the money came from DeCoster, two other men's names were on the Ohio permits instead, since he was supposedly only a lender.
Both Wright County and Quality Egg are owned by the DeCoster family, which has a string of agribusiness interests in the Midwest and Northeast.
In 2000, Iowa's attorney general declared DeCoster a "habitual violator" of state environmental laws after a series of discharges of manure from his hog-farming operations.
Don Hershey, the nominal boss of Ohio Fresh, isn't talking, but he testified at the hearing that he was frustrated because DeCoster kept second-guessing him.
They had a scrapbook that had a newspaper article about and picture of DeCoster, and they concluded that he was the man in the truck.
As Forbes reported in a 2006 story here, in 2003 DeCoster bought Ohio Fresh Eggs, which has operations at several locations in farmland outside of Columbus, Ohio.
In the past, laws and rules in the agriculture industry have allowed DeCoster to operate in the background to hold off the kind of scrutiny he now faces.
It appears DeCoster's Iowa and Maine operations were in the red last year, but he must have the occasional good year or he (and his bankers) would presumably have long since left the business.
Still, when Bear heard about a new egg company opening in Ohio, she wondered if DeCoster was involved, even though a new Ohio statute would make it more difficult for an owner to stay silent.
DeCoster's son insisted to Forbes in the 2006 story that his dad was just a lender who reluctantly got involved in running the Ohio operation in order to clean up problems created by poor management.
In 2000 Iowa's Department of Natural Resources labeled DeCoster a "habitual violator" of environmental laws and banned him from expanding operations in the state for four years because of violations at hog farms he owned.
In June, company owner Jack DeCoster admitted to 10 civil counts of animal cruelty in Maine after a nonprofit animal welfare group conducted an undercover video investigation and forwarded its findings to Maine animal welfare officials.
In 1996, the Labor Department accused DeCoster of maintaining "sweatshop conditions" for migrant workers at its Turner, Maine, chicken farm, where then-Labor Secretary Robert Reich said workers risked salmonella by handling dead chickens and manure with their bare hands.
In January 2002, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission hit another DeCoster company with allegations that its supervisors sexually assaulted and harassed female employees, some of whom were in the country illegally, and threatened to retaliate against them if they complained.
Finally, the Ohio Department of Agriculture moved to revoke the company's operating permits--not for environmental violations but on the grounds that DeCoster controlled or had the right to control the new company, and should have, but didn't, disclose that fact.
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