Another chicken litter lawsuit filed
Posted on Saturday, August 9, 2008
Another lawsuit was filed Friday claiming that poultry producers used arseniclaced chicken feed that led to carcinogenic litter in the Prairie Grove area.
Nine similar lawsuits involving a total of 138 individual cases have already been filed against Alpharma Inc. and Northwest Arkansas poultry companies, according to court records.
The plaintiffs in the latest case are Christopher Scott Rasco, Robert G. Grupe and Vicki Baker, administrator of the estate of Larry Dee Baker, all from Prairie Grove. Rasco contracted a brain tumor; Grupe developed a brain cyst; and the late Larry Dee Baker had colon cancer, according to the lawsuit.
Defendants include Alpharma, Tyson Foods, George’s Farms, Peterson Farms, Simmons Foods, Cargill and others.
Only one of the other lawsuits, with one defendant, has gone to trial. Following a three-week trial in 2006, the jury took 21 minutes to reach its verdict in favor of feedadditive maker Alpharma. The poultry companies were dismissed from that case.
However, an Arkansas Supreme Court decision in May ruled poultry producers can go to trial in the lawsuit, reversing 4 th Judicial Circuit Judge Kim Smith’s granting of a pretrial motion that eliminated poultry producers as defendants.
That suit was filed by Mary and Michael Green Sr., whose son, Michael “ Blu ” Green, was diagnosed with leukemia in 1999. The Greens sued poultry producers and feed companies in 2003.
Farmers used arsenicladen chicken litter as fertilizer in local fields, including one by Blu’s school, and it caused his leukemia, the Greens contended.
The companies said the Greens and the other families can’t prove that the feed caused what the lawsuit calls a “ cancer cluster” around Prairie Grove.
The Green case is currently scheduled for a new trial including the poultry companies in May.
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