The following transcript was generated using automated transcription software for the accessibility and convenience of our audience. While we strive for accuracy, the automated process may introduce errors, omissions, or misinterpretations. This transcript is intended as a helpful companion to the original audio and should not be considered a verbatim record. For the most accurate representation, please refer to the audio recording.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm Michael Dunne. The Costco rotisserie chicken is kind of legendary. It's a staple of the big box retailer and has remained remarkably low priced for decades. In fact, Costco sells so many of these and other chicken products that it owns its own chicken farm, and according to a Portland nonprofit that aims to reform our food system, that's where the problem starts. According to Farm Forward, Costco has a big problem with salmonella infecting these chickens that are shipped all over the country. Today, on the show, we talk to the organization about this issue, and we also chat with KLCC's Julia Boboc about her story about a Cottage Grove woman's harsh interaction with ICE. Andrew deCoriolis, who is the Executive Director of Farm Forward. Thanks so much for coming on and talking with us.
ANDREW DECORIOLIS: Thanks for having me.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Let's start with this. What is Farm Forward? What does your organization do now?
ANDREW DECORIOLIS: Farm Forward is a nonprofit focused on food system transformation. Broadly. We're trying to change the way that the US raises animals for food. Right now, virtually all animals that are raised for food, whether it's, you know, chickens and turkeys or dairy cows, pigs, etc, are raised in industrial animal farms, and that comes with a lot of public health, environmental and personal health concerns, and so we're working to try to change the way that those animals are raised.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And you came out with a report recently that looks at Costco and its rotisserie chickens, which are obviously very popular and talk about what you found.
ANDREW DECORIOLIS: That's right, yeah, we released a report today about salmonella contamination in the Costco supply chain. And Costco is a unique company for many reasons, but one of the things that make them unique is that they are the only retailer in America that owns their own chicken operation. So they are, you know, in addition to being a retailer, they are also chicken farmers and we've been looking at salmonella contamination across the poultry industry and looking at data from the US Department of Agriculture about which slaughter plants and processing plants in the US have high rates of salmonella contamination and are exceeding the salmonella standards set by the USDA. And what we found, unfortunately, is that there's a lot of contamination in the poultry industry that salmonella is is widespread, but then there are a handful of companies that have particularly bad salmonella track records, so companies that have plants that routinely violate USDA salmonella standards, and one of those is the Costco chicken plant in Nebraska, and it processes chickens for all of Costco throughout the US. So, they, you know, have this very large operation that's killing several 100 million chickens every year that go into the Costco supply chain. So those are, you know, birds that are going into both, you know, raw products sold under the Kirkland brand, and also going into the rotisserie chicken that so many consumers know about. And you know, the public figures are a little hard to get, but what we've seen is estimates that something like 40% of the Kirkland brand raw chicken that people are buying in grocery stores come from this plant in Nebraska.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And I guess that raises the fundamental issue here is, is that it's kind of this. Our food system is like this funnel, and so one operation could have huge health impacts, can't it?
ANDREW DECORIOLIS: Absolutely, yeah. The chicken industry in particular, is incredibly consolidated. There are four companies that control majority of the marketplace in the United States, Costco, interestingly, is not, not one of the biggest they are, you know, compared to some of the other big ones, like Tyson, Purdue, other household name brands, they're a fairly small player, but they're a significant player for Costco operations, right? Because they have such a kind. Consolidated supply chain, we think it creates some unique risk for consumers.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Okay, here in Oregon, I imagine there could certainly be Costco’s here in the state of Oregon that are getting their rotisserie chickens from the plant you just described.
ANDREW DECORIOLIS: That's absolutely true. Yeah, both rotisserie and the raw chicken for the Kirkland brand products could very well be coming from Nebraska.
MICHAEL DUNNE: How did you conduct your research? I mean, is it a matter of going in and buying these, these rotisserie chickens and testing them, kind of give us a peek under the hood, if you will, of how you conducted the research?
ANDREW DECORIOLIS: Yeah, absolutely. So, all of our research is based on data from the USDA. So, the US Department of Agriculture, the Food Safety Inspection Service, conducts testing into salmonella contamination and other contamination in slaughterhouses and processing plants around the country. They publish this data on their website. They look at monthly records going back almost 10 years, and they report to consumers, to interested advocates like us, which plants are doing better and which ones are doing worse. The challenge is that this data is hard to access. It's really buried on the USDA website, it's not something that's easily accessible for consumers. And then you have to know a whole bunch about how the USDA regulates salmonella to understand what it means to pass or fail their standards, or whether a plant is, you know, category one and passes the salmonella standards, or if it's category three and is failing it. And so, a lot of what we've done here is just use publicly available data to contextualize what's going on in specific poultry operations and in specific companies, and then the rest of it is looking at, yeah, exactly as you said, what products are on shelves. And what we've seen is that, you know, a lot of the chicken from the Kirkland brand in particular is coming from this Nebraska plant. And I think that's really where the highest risk for consumers is, are these raw chicken products, which, you know, we know because of how contaminated that plant is, a significant percentage of the raw products coming into the store are likely to be contaminated. And so, if you're a consumer and you're going to Costco every week to buy Kirkland brand chicken, it's very likely that you're buying contaminated chicken, you know, up to, you know, five to 10 times a year. So, it's, it's a major concern for Costco customers.
MICHAEL DUNNE: You talk about the salmonella contamination, but there's some other things you found as well, including, you know, human handling violations and also some, some, some labor and environmental abuses. Talk about those as well.
ANDREW DECORIOLIS: Absolutely. So you know, the widespread contamination of meat with fecal bacteria like Salmonella is almost inevitable given how chickens and turkeys are raised for food, something like 90% of chickens and turkeys in the United States are genetically modified. They're raised in large confinement operations with fairly filthy conditions. These are exactly the kinds of conditions that create the breeding grounds for disease. Those diseases don't stay on farms. They end up in grocery stores and ultimately, on our home, on our shelves and in our homes. The piece of data that we're pulling out that's new from this report is that there's a fairly strong connection between how animals are raised, how birds are treated, and the rates of contamination. And so this is from the USDA zone research that humane handling has an effect on, ultimately the salmonella loading, how much contamination is on the end products. And what we found is that Costco has been routinely cited for humane handling violations in their Lincoln Nebraska plants, they have also been the subject of undercover investigations that found, you know, significant amounts of animal abuse, mistreatment, filthy conditions on their farms. And when that was brought to light several years ago, Costco, more or less shrugged their shoulders and said, Well, this is business as usual. They made some very halfhearted public statements about improving the conditions for birds in their poultry operation, but as the salmonella contamination rates seem to suggest, very little has changed. Interesting.
MICHAEL DUNNE: What are some large-scale practices in the industry that your organization looks at and says this is probably a better way, both for animal treatment, for the people who work there, but also for consumers in general?
ANDREW DECORIOLIS: Absolutely. So far forward advocates a broad range of sort of specific husbandry changes to the poultry industry, that includes the genetics of the birds that are raised right now, the bird that's raised by virtually every chicken company in America are very fast growing genetically modified birds that end up having significant amount of health and welfare problems because of how they've been bred. So, you can imagine, like a Frenchie or a dog that's been, you know, highly bred to do one thing, unfortunately, those animals also have health and welfare problems because of it. And that's true for the chickens and turkeys that we raise for food. So, the first thing that you know we've been advocating for more than 20 years are changes to the genetics of the birds that we raise from meat and eggs. And this isn't a radical suggestion or recommendation. These are changes that other companies, many other poultry companies, have either made or are making, including some of the sort of you know, corollary companies to Costco, one which is, it's European, but it's a very similar company to Costco, called Rima 1000 it's a large discount chain. They also own their own chicken farm, vertically integrated in the same ways that Costco has. They have fully adopted and implemented changes to their chicken husbandry practices to include better genetics, more space for birds, better handling and slaughter practices. All of those changes are being made without increasing cost to their consumers. And so, I think what you know Costco customers have to wonder is, you know, why aren't, you know, why isn't Costco making the same kinds of changes if they can dramatically improve the products and the safety of those products and the welfare of the animals, you know, on their operations, you know? Why isn't Costco making that change? And you know, it's something that we've been encouraging for several years, and so far, you know, Costco has, has not, has not made much progress.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Andrew deCoriolis, who is the Executive Director of Farm Forward, fascinating stuff. Thank you so much for coming on and talking with us.
ANDREW DECORIOLIS: Thanks for having me, Michael.
MICHAEL DUNNE: We're going to finish out the show by talking with our own Julia Boboc, who's produced a story about one local woman's harrowing ordeal with Ice. Julia Boboc, a reporter here for us at KLCC. Thanks for coming in and talking.
JULIA BOBOC: Thanks for having me.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I really was moved by the story you did earlier this month about what happened to a woman in Cottage Grove with regard to Ice. Why don't you just give us an overall synopsis of your story?
JULIA BOBOC: Absolutely so. Yeah. I spoke to a woman from Cottage Grove and her daughter. She had been driving on the road early in the morning, and ICE agents had stopped her and dragged her out of her car, handcuffed her in the middle of the street and not asked for any verification of her documentation, and she had had her Green Card in her pocket the entire time, and in the meantime, her daughter drove by, recognized her mom in the street, and eventually was able to get the agents to uncuff her.
MICHAEL DUNNE: What did this woman tell you about her ordeal? It sounds horrifying, obviously, but just what were some of the emotions that she had to deal with in that moment?
JULIA BOBOC: It was so fascinating, because I think we have a lot of ideas of how immigrants are moving in the United States right now, but a really big kind of emotion or idea that she brought up early on was when the agents came up to her door. She never thought they were Ice. She immediately thought that they were kidnappers. Wow. And there was just this immense amount of fear and confusion, really aggressive confusion, because they were actively misleading her about their own identities and their own intentions. And then on the daughter's side, obviously, there's this really visceral fear and again, confusion about what is my mom doing in this situation when she's not done anything wrong?
MICHAEL DUNNE: Yeah, and you point out in the story, as you mentioned, she had her Green Card on her. But as you pointed out, residency status isn't just, you know, cut and dried with what's happening with Ice these days, is it?
JULIA BOBOC: That's right, that's right. Yeah, it was. It was interesting to talk to an immigration lawyer who has been practicing immigration law for more than 20 years, and he said he'd never seen anything like this, where they don't ask for anything. And the point is, in a lot of ways. Cases are, and the quote that we're seeing constantly is, take now, ask questions later. And that's really, I think, representative in this, this story as well.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Yeah, yeah, you had a chance to talk to the daughter. What were some of the things that she told you?
JULIA BOBOC: I mean, talking to the daughter was so emotional for me, as a daughter of immigrants as well, because there's just such a vulnerability that she had to have in order to explain everything that she was going through in that moment. And that's one of the most traumatizing things that's probably ever happened to her, seeing her mother in that position. And I think we can all relate, you know, we all have moms and sure we can all relate to what it might feel like to see our moms in that state. And she was really but she was so strong, like she was really, really strong and brave in the way that she was telling her story. And she was like, I just want to make sure that people understand that we're not scared. We want to tell our story so that people understand what's really happening and, in our community, and we're not scared of Ice coming after us at all anymore, because this is a really important story to tell, and I feel really grateful that they felt comfortable telling it to me.
MICHAEL DUNNE: When you were putting this together and talking with the people that you talked to - so many of us have seen ICE raids captured on social media in other places. You know, big cities like LA and Chicago and whatnot. When you were putting this story together, did you think? You know, I guess the guise of the question is, it can happen anywhere?
JULIA BOBOC: Literally, because I was so even before I had talked to anyone, when I just first heard of the story. I was like, What is Ice doing in Cottage Grove, Oregon? Like this is a smallish, rural-ish town, sure, and it just seemed extremely random. But also, in talking to people who live there, and in talking to Juanita and Emily, there's a pretty solid Hispanic population there. And also, there are a lot of people who are commuting to work at the time of the morning when Juanita was detained, commuting up to the mountains, in the fields to work. And a lot of them are migrant workers. And so yeah, it can happen anywhere. But also, there's an intention, I think I'm assuming here, but I assume there's an intention in choosing the places that they're going to go and choosing the efforts they're going to take, and it seems very directed at Hispanic populations.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Yeah, I want to get back to sort of the beginning of the incident where Juanita didn't even understand who these people were. Did she describe were these ICE agents wearing the full-face masks and things like that that we've seen again on social media.
JULIA BOBOC: Yeah, so there were two agents in the initial encounter. There was a man who came up to her driver's side door. He was unmasked, and they had, I think, regular clothes on, but a green vest, and she said he had a badge on his hip. So, you know, when you're sitting in the driver's side of your door, you might not see that. And then there was another man who came to the passenger side, attempted to open the rest of the doors to her car, and he was entirely masked. But the jarring thing for me, or at least the first kind of huge red flag that I saw in this entire encounter, was that they initially identify themselves as police, as officers. And Juanita is very active in the community. She works with the police with translation and things like that, and she knew immediately that these were not police officers. This is not how they dress, this is not what they look like. This is not what they do. And that was when it shifted to kidnappers, as opposed to ICE agents. And part of that might be, you know, this is Cottage Grove. These are not ICE agents. You know, what would they be doing here?
MICHAEL DUNNE: The immigration attorney that you spoke to, I mean, is he seeing more and more of this? Is this kind of very much an outlier, or are we seeing more of this in the overall Oregon community?
JULIA BOBOC: So it was interesting to talk to him, because he works a lot with immigrants who are trying to get their residency. And so, he's not necessarily working with immigrants or talking with immigrants who are being wrongfully detained by ICE. Obviously, he's aware of the news and things like that. What he really spoke to from the work that he does is the fear that the immigrants that he's working with now have about even getting their residency in the first place, and that there's this idea that it doesn't really, it might not even matter if you do everything the right way, because, as we've seen in courtrooms across the country, you know, you go to get your asylum, you go to get legal status, or at least speak to a judge, and then you walk out of the courtroom and you get detained anyways, and, um. Yeah, I think he can. He kind of spoke to the environment around immigrants who are also trying to do the right thing, but aware of even the risks of doing that.
MICHAEL DUNNE: So, Julia, my last question for you is, towards the end of your story, you talked about how the communities responded, talk a little bit about that.
JULIA BOBOC: That was so beautiful, and that was a moment where Juanita really got emotional, and I had this really incredible experience where, as I was standing on the street where all of this happened, this woman drove by in her car and rolled down her window, and was like, I'm so sorry that this happened to you. We need to rally around you. This is terrible what's happening in this country, and we can't let this keep happening. And it was so like, just the moments that you dream of, as a journalist to be just a part of and be able to watch, and as a human to be able to watch. But, yeah, the community, there's, you know, Cottage Grove is really interesting because there's a dynamic in the community. There's a community that's very conservative, and that has, you know, spoken out on behalf of, or not on behalf of Ice, but in support of Ice in this case, but there's also a really large community of, you know, people and Hispanic and otherwise, who are rallying around Juanita and understanding that her experience was terrible. And they bring her gifts, and they're trying to, you know, create these organizations that are bringing awareness to this issue. They did a candlelight vigil, someone, someone gave Juanita their grandparents World War Two vet hat. Wow. And I was like, that is so incredible. And so, it's just so emotional, you know? And she has it hanging in her store, in her Latina store, and it was really awesome to see not just the way the community is supporting Juanita and her daughter, but also how emotional it makes them, and how it really does make them feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Julia Boboc, thanks so much for your story. Thanks so much for coming in and talking with us.
JULIA BOBOC: Thank you.
MICHAEL DUNNE: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon On The Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. While Oregon ski resorts still wait for snow, one thing that is a certainty for skiers eventually heading to the mountains: extremely high prices that show no sign of stopping. We'll talk about it tomorrow with an Oregonian finance reporter. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon On The Record, thanks for listening.
