Agencies split work if trucks spill meat
Posted on Monday, March 17, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/220024/
Pig guts and chicken eyeballs and whole, live cows.
Oh, my.
Several tons of such things spill from trucks onto Arkansas roadways several times every year. And while the law is clear on who is responsible to clean it up — you spill it, you scrub it — the way the state monitors the aftermath of such events varies widely.
Different departments get involved for different reasons and with different responsibilities.
The Arkansas Health Department handles food products. Whole carcasses are under the purview of the state Livestock and Poultry Commission.
Any blood spilled on the road constitutes a biohazard, according to state rules, but the Arkansas Office of Emergency Management doesn’t deal with that at all. And the Arkansas Highway Department has no responsibilities either, other than to make sure the road isn’t damaged and to help keep traffic moving.
Each agency said another agency — usually police — would have to call and ask them to get involved. And that’s only when one agency isn’t doing another a favor.
Everything begins after lots and lots of animals — or at least parts of them — wind up all over the road. The driver calls his company, which calls its insurance company, which calls out a private contractor.
“We only charge for the work we do,” said Bennie Cornelius, manager of Highway 59 Environmental Services’ Texarkana office, which cleaned 40, 000 pounds of chicken parts off Interstate 30 last month. “We’re not like lawyers. There’s no retainer or anything.”
Firefighters and police also get called out and usually get there first, though they don’t always know what to do.
Highway department spokesman Randy Ort said volunteer firefighters showed up to the I-30 spill and started spraying all the chicken parts off the interstate with a high-pressure hose, sending chicken eyeballs rolling all over.
“It was the truck driver who made the spill who had to stop them and say, ‘ No, you can’t do that, ’” Ort said.
Cornelius, a volunteer firefighter himself, said that used to be all such a situation called for.
“A few guys and a hose, and that’s it,” he said. “But you can’t do that anymore.”
To clean up the chicken parts, his company loaded them into a dump truck and took them to a landfill, then went over the area of the spill with a vacuum, spread lime and then pressure washed it. He said his firm will go back twice more to put down more lime to make sure the crew gets everything, then spread new dirt along the interstate and plant new grass seed.
“You won’t even know it was there,” he said.
Less than two weeks later in Benton, 21 cows died after a tractor-trailer carrying 70 of the animals overturned on Interstate 30 a little after midnight. Charles Gann, director of field operations for the livestock and poultry commission, said his agency monitored the clean-up as a “courtesy.”
“Usually we get involved if there’s some question about how an animal died,” he said. “I think it’s safe to say that we pretty much know how these animals died.”
The commission is only responsible for whole carcasses, he said.
“Parts of parts of animals or parts of parts of chickens, that’s not our job,” Gann said.
State Veterinarian Pat Badley, whose office is affiliated with the commission, said burial is a common method of disposal.
“Even then, you have certain things to take into account,” he said. “You have to be sure it’s away from stream beds, away from wells and you have you be sure the hole you dig is deep enough.”
He said Gann supervised the burial of the dead cows on property in Grant County to make sure it was handled correctly.
“You just want to be as safe as possible,” he said.
Should the spilled animals parts be packaged or prepared as food, the Arkansas Health Department has jurisdiction.
“The first thing we’d check is if the product is intact,” department Communications Director Ann Wright said.
And if the packaging and temperature haven’t changed too much, and if the road hasn’t added any extra water, gasoline or oils, the trucker can go on his way, she said.
“Now if there is an issue, we supervise all of that closely and would follow the products to a landfill and make sure they were disposed of properly,” Wright said.
Ort from the Highway Department said liability concerns from someone later getting sick because a road was cleaned improperly are remote.
“If someone fell off the back of a truck and licked the highway and got sick — sure, something like that could happen, I guess, but let’s just say we haven’t had that come up just yet.”