Dirty Money

This is the Jack DeCoster gym at Hyles Anderson College

These are the eggs sold by Jack to build things like that gym

This is Jack.

Meet Jack DeCoster. Chicken Farmer. Egg Recaller. Fundamentalist.

Oh, and financial supporter of Hyles Anderson College with no less than two buildings there named after him. One can only hope that the DeCoster dining hall cares more about food safety than Jack apparently seems to.

According to ABC News:

He’s been involved in legal cases that have forced him to settle with the federal government for hiring illegal immigrants, for tolerating sexual harassment at his company, and has faced a litany of animal cruelty charges. DeCoster has also paid millions of dollars in fines and settlements over the years stemming from complaints about the health violations at his farms.

One can only assume that his fundamentalist friends simply labeled these incidents as “persecution” and kept taking his money anyway.

Now half a billion eggs have been recalled in a salmonella scare, a large part of them coming from Jack’s company.

In fundamentalism money not only talks, it preaches. It preaches loudly.

Thanks to Matthew at JesusNeedsNewPR.net for drawing the lines and sharing his personal experience with this story.

79 thoughts on “Dirty Money”

  1. @Kirsten
    That sounds like the ones I know! They are more into fried things with cheese sauce than organic.
    I tend to eat a little more healthily than the average American and have gotten a lot of grief over it from my fundy relatives.

  2. At BJU, we had a subset of people (of which I was one), who opted for alternative medicine where possible. In many ways, that belief that in the Creation we have been given a system that will sustain and heal us does line up nicely with fundy beliefs. And the properties of herbs that give hints of their uses by their shape, taste, and smell is a belief that goes back to the Puritans or before. At BJU, while I was there, the administration pushed a nursing faculty member, Kathleen Crispin, to come down on alternative medicine as New Age and therefor evil. Raised quite a bother among the faculty that strongly supported herbal remedies, chiropractic, and juicing. Ultimately, most of us “crunchies” just wrote her off as a weirdo. I experienced such a strong reaction to antibiotics that I had to go without using them, and I made it for 19 years without ever using an antibiotic, relying on diet and alternative measures to treat infections (including a strept infection in my heart). When I had to have surgery, of course I had to take antibiotics (and prednisone), but the surgeon told me I healed better than any patient he’d ever had: not bad for a person whose immune system can be stopped by penicillin. So I think the crunchies have a point, and yes I think the pharma industry is just a business with sociopathic money makers in it. Crunchies or not, we do not need “farmers” stockpiling live chickens in death houses to make them lay eggs until they perish from heat, suffocation, or disease. It’s just plain old inhumane. “A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” Proverbs 12:10

    1. Oh dear God! Listen I know you mean well and all…but please stop short of assigning some veil of righteousness to “organic” living. Unless you go all the way and become Amish, you’re just taking your preference and finding a few Bible verses that make it sound like doctrine. I’m glad it works for you. The more you hype it the more I want to go running through the drug storage room at Walgreens randomly eating every pill I can get my hands on.
      Love in Christ,

  3. Science, science, science. Don’t have the science? Then you don’t have an argument. Not everything has been studied, so you go with your own opinions, but that is all they are until it has been scrutinized by the Scientific Method. And, yes – I’m talking to the pharmaceuticals too. Lots of trumped up stuff that the general population is not educated enough to read a study objectively and make an informed decision – so they take the meds anyway. I wish medical doctors would take this on, some are starting but many still do not. I think younger doctors (in my personal experience) are more skeptical of big pharma.

  4. All you have to do is watch the commercials on TV and pay attention to the quickly read list at the end about all of the possible side effects to make you think twice before indulging in pharms.

  5. “Science, science, science. Don’t have the science? Then you don’t have an argument. Not everything has been studied, so you go with your own opinions, but that is all they are until it has been scrutinized by the Scientific Method.”

    Oh what a bunch of garbage. Scores of people have died on the scientific method. Do you know how many drugs have been validated as safe, and they harmed people the first month they were out on the market? Dinitrophenol called people the first week it was released, after two doses, for some of the victims.All on the scientific method.

    Empirical knowledge is just fine, thank you, and often more reliable. I lived through the years when scientists assured us that Vitamin C had no effect on colds. I lived through the years when mothers were told that breast feeding their babies was unsanitary. Phh! Garbage.

    Believing in your own infallibility is dangerous and stupid. Acupuncture reduces inflammation. It’s been doing so for centuries, including for the 100 years when Western scientists dismissed it because of the scientific method. They can’t explain why. Aloe vera cools burns. We didn’t know why for decades. It just does. And it did it long before anybody did any studies on it.

    The idea that we’re supposed to dismiss a treatment that has a history of success, even anecdotal success, because scientists have not rubber stamped it is asinine. Why give up following the gods of Fundamentalism only to follow the gods of science? For crying out loud, think for yourself, examine the history of therapies, and make your own decisions and then be responsible for them.

    1. Scores have died waiting for Jaayzusuh to heal them too. Lots of little kids died because mommy and daddy were expecting a miracle or because they insisted on holistic “medicine”. Your myopic approach is just as bad as the one you rail against. I’m glad it works for you. But if my life or my daughters life is on the line I’m going to do everything I can think of to get her better.

  6. “Science” can be used well, and it can be used poorly. Consider homeopathy, one of the big “alternative” treatments today. Explanations for its supposed efficacy have been put forth, and none have stood up to rigorous studies (a good use of science). The supposed mechanisms have no effect on cells in the laboratory, and homeopathic “remedies” have no greater effect than a placebo on actual people. Yet several alternative medicine types I know promote it endlessly, despite this. These sorts of things make me skeptical of alternative treatments, until they’ve shown results in properly controlled trials – not just anecdotal evidence from here or there. /digression

  7. @Darrell “And in a strange turn of events none other than Steven “the pissing preacher” Anderson’s wife has written a blog post listing the history of Jack DeCoster’s legal troubles:”

    Gasp – you might actually agree with Anderson on something! Scary. He’s pretty strongly anti-HAC anyway, so I guess this salmonella thing is just one more reason for him not to like them.

  8. Josh,
    anything that has not been double blind studied is not science. Its simple. Everything else is snake oil until proved other wise via the scientific method. It is golden and what keeps us out of the dark ages.

  9. Bassenco,
    you mistake the FDA, politcos and corruption with the scientific method. These are two different issues. The scientificc method requires thinking, a lot of thinking. I really get steamed when people trash the sciences and scientists. We ALL benefit daily and unless you are going to become Amish, I really find the suspicion and skepticism more fashionable than credible.

  10. ” it turns out she ripped most of that post off from writer Martha Rosenberg without giving her credit.”

    She rips off blog posts from Martha Rosenberg and her husband rips off sermons from Jim Jones.

  11. @maybe gray

    [way off topic]
    Watching a BBC documentary on Youtube, I was amazed to see where a study using homeopathic preparations on cell cultures showed positive results, even when a researcher was using a computer to count the cells. Problem was, the researcher was not blind to which cells received which preparation. When the study was repeated in a double-blind fashion, the homeopathic preparation did no better than the control.

    “Remember, if water has a memory, homeopathy is full of s***!” (shamelessly borrowed quote)
    [/way off topic]

  12. Josh,
    the vitamin industry could easily prove their claims by conducting double blinds, they are awash with money. They don’t because they know its all flim flammery. You piss out most of that pill, that’s why your pee is florescent yellow.

  13. If any of you are really interested in big business fraud, govt and fundamentalism, do some research into Ken Lay and the now infamous Enron Scandal. Lay’s money went far into fundamentalism and he defrauded some of them too. His brother Keith Lay was a principle at a Christian School in PA. The church/school “invested” a lot of it’s Christian Education Trust Fund in Enron and various other Lay suggestions. There is a lot of information here. Fascinating.

  14. The idea that the scientific method is going to save us all is what is naive (also outdated), for the scientific method, while it looks great on paper, is often not able to be carried out by real, live human beings. Here’s another common flaw in real-world scientific methods: US studies that base sample size on representation of all races, so they include LATINOS, not a race at all, and African Americans, also not a race at all. Swapping this in for genuine genetic diversity is a flaw in the very premise of lots of clinical studies. Any two African Americans picked at random may represent far greater variance in characteristics than an African American and a white American picked at random. Yet they are selected to fill a quote based on the idea that they possess certain similarities. Ditto with the made up race of “Latinos,” which can include people from South America, Portugal, or Spain.

    Trusting THAT blindly in the scientific method to deliver safe and effective therapies over the empirical knowledge acquired over centuries by practice is naive, to say the least. We’ve seen enough drug recalls and lawsuits and revoked surgical practices to know full well that flawed human beings cannot devise a perfect system.

  15. Maybe this egg scandal is a backdoor method to draw attention to the heartlessness of Christian Fundamentalism and its disregard for mercy and compassion. Dozens of sex abuse cases against children have not yet caught media attention. Now that the entire nation has been inconvenienced or even distressed by a mindset that regards only itself, maybe we’ll see greater public scrutiny of the religion of Christian Fundamentalism. I hope so.

  16. BTW, here’s some detail on DeCoster’s sociopathy: In the early 1990’s, the state of Maryland tried to stop DeCoster from selling quarantined eggs across state lines, but because the state of Maryland has authority only to protect itself, a federal judge ruled in DeCoster’s favor and allowed him to sell eggs to other states that Maryland inspectors had determined were potentially dangerous and infected with salmonella:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/25/AR2010082507192.html

    Would your church discipline a member for selling potentially dangerous produce to others simply because he could get away with it?

  17. So maybe he’s got a little egg on his face?

    But, Bless Gawd, his heart’s in the right place.

  18. It’$ all about the money…

    During Dr. Hyles’ ministry the First Baptist Church has increased in property evaluation to over $30,000,000. -Foreward to “Jack Hyles’ Favorite Soul Winning Tales”

    Not sure what that has to do with his so-called “Soul Winning” but they made sure to put it in the Foreward.

  19. “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.” (1 Timothy 6:10)

    And of course:

    “‘No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.’ The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him.” (Luke 16:13-14)

    Yep, I think you’re right, Don.

  20. Jack DeCoster and his family are still laughing all they way to the BANK. All this talk about them being out of the egg business is pure rotten lies from the very pits of HELL. They are the LLC DONS of the egg business and all the Egg Companies the DeCoster’s OWN are under the table. Case in POINT; there is a certain Egg Broker from Aqua Town, Massachusetts who, on paper owned, with an option to buy, Mountain Hallow Egg Farms (a DeCoster Entity) to circumvent a New England Boycott. The New England Super Market Giants and the Bentonville Super Market Supergiant continue to purchase eggs from the DeCoster through those apparent hidden DeCoster Entities.

    The DeCosters are the probe of a Grand Jury sitted in Northen District of Iowa and they are sitting low. Will there be an Indictement for violations of the RICO Statues, Continued Criminal Enterprise Statues, etc.? Probably not! Why? Because the MULTI BILLIONAIRE Jack DeCoster and Family can buy their way all the way to the Whitehouse and even the Courthouse. In the Courtroom the DeCoster hire lawyers who went to the same lawschool as the sitting Judge and have found favor with the court system in the past.

    New Non Profit News Projects coming soon will bring to light the inner workings of the DeCoster Empire with real evidence that will at least give the consumer public an understanding as to from whom they are buying (the DeCoster).

    Jack DeCoster was advised that he needed to maintain his multi million tons of chicken manure in a way that would be friendly for the environment as a whole which would benifit the workforce, the flock producing the golden eggs, the neighbors and the consumer public. While Jack was being advised his Farm Manager Tony Wazmund was laughing at the idea. After that laugh, some 6 years later a 550,000,000 egg recall due to being tainted with salmonella occured…….Jack knew all the time, but did not care and still does not care! He prayed for no one and cares for no one.

    He knows he built an Egg Empire when he was 59 and claimed in his testimony before Congress that he was still operating as though they were small not realizing they had grown to MEGA EGG FARM PORPORTIONS……..in other words he lied when he testified before Congress…..why not contempt of Congress and/or perjury…..because he has politcal lobbiest that reach each and every member of any/and all committees. The lobbiest know the very top. There will be no indictment and/or if there is one, there will be no conviction.

    MORE TO COME IN near future.

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