More Incompetence From Todd Staples

During his campaign for Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Democrat Hank Gilbert (pictured) has exposed several instances of the incompetence of the current Ag. Commissioner, Todd Staples.   Just last week I wrote here on this blog about service stations whose gas pumps had not been inspected for more than ten years, making it very likely that the pumps were not accurately dispensing the amount of gas that customers were paying for.   The pump inspections are supposed to be done regularly by the Texas Department of Agriculture.

It's bad enough that the people of Texas have been getting ripped off when they make purchases in the middle of a recession due to the incompetent leadership at the Department of Agriculture, but now we learn of an even more dangerous situation demonstrating that same incompetence -- a situation that easily could have cost lives.

Last Fall, a peanut farmer in Eastland County misused a neuro-toxic pesticide called Temik on his crop of peanuts.   The poison killed a lot of wildlife (including deer, dove, turkeys and other wildlife) and seriously injured a Department of Agriculture inspector.   It's just a miracle that the peanuts never made it to market where they could have killed unsuspecting members of the public, because the situation was mishandled and then covered up by Todd Staples. Here is what Mr. Gilbert had to say about the situation:

"It is a complete and total miracle that peanuts contaminated with a neurotoxin never made it into our state's food supply, but Todd Staples can't even take credit for that. Based on our research, it was an individual regulatory inspector with TDA and an individual DSHS inspector that managed keep these peanuts from being harvested while their superiors in Austin passed the buck, stalled, and tried to figure out who was in charge of what and who had the statutory authority to do what-if anything at all."

"TDA's Assistant Commissioner for communications is on the record telling a county judge in Eastland not to talk about some of the health risks associated with this. It is unconscionable to think that the top leadership of a state agency would tell an elected official not to inform his constituents of something so important."

"This pesticide is so toxic, it can kill a small child without the child even coming into physical contact with the pesticide. In 1990, a three-year-old in California nearly died from inhaling Temik that was on a tractor parked near where she was playing."

"Given these two incidents, I cannot imagine why Todd Staples allowed TDA officials to stand around and just say 'we don't have the authority,' or 'it's not our job,' when this became known to them."

"All he had to do is pick up his phone, call the Attorney General and ask him to seek an injunction from a state district judge in Eastland County to stop these peanuts from being harvested. The fact of the matter is that state statutes are weakly constructed in this area and don't give any state agency the authority over crops in the field in this situation. Although I'll be working with the Legislature to get that authority for TDA, if such an incident were to happen under current law, you can bet that I would work with the Attorney General to make 100 percent sure these peanuts never left the field on their way to market."

"You can only use this pesticide at certain points in the life cycle of certain food or fruit bearing plants. At the time this product was used, the risk of Temik residuals in the plants was very high. Letting these peanuts get to market could have been a catastrophe."

"TDA's top leadership was telling other agencies that they were working with TCEQ to clean this up. Then they were telling them that they had no statutory authority to clean it up. That's classic pass the buck politics."

"If TDA is going to regulate pesticides, then the agency needs to actually regulate the use of pesticides, not have to pass the buck from agency to agency. Under my plan, that will end. TDA inspectors will be able to order an abatement in a case like this and not have to worry about whether another state agency is going to drop the ball."

"We first heard about this case because people from all over West Texas-from Eastland county to Midland County-were calling our office to tell us that a TDA regulatory inspector was nearly killed after investigating this incident. These were people who don't work for TDA, but were people who are actually regulated by TDA that were calling us to tell us this had happened."

"How can you, in good conscience, send the underappreciated, underpaid regulatory inspectors that work for this agency into the field with nothing more than a box of Kleenex, some paper masks, and latex gloves to inspect a pesticide so toxic it can absorb through leather shoes and stay in the leather so long that if you continue to wear the shoes, you'll become severely ill."

 "This is like sending someone off to fight a war against a well-armed enemy with a toothpick and a Lawrence Welk album. That's how absurd this is."

"That Todd Staples allowed this to happen-and then fought with the Texas Department of Insurance when they tried to help these employees-is unbelievable. This goes beyond the political. This is immoral and an assault on human dignity."

"Through this case, you can see what happens when you have a state agency run by a professional politician using the post as a stepping stone--who has taken money from the manufacturer of this pesticide, and the manufacturers of dozens of others-stacking the decks with political appointees with no business running this agency. You can also see what happens when you have an multiple agencies that share different regulatory fruits of the same tree. It makes no sense to have this done in such a patchwork fashion that three or four state agencies are having to consult with each other just to see if any of them even possesses the authority to stop a crop tainted with a  toxic pesticide from coming to market."

"And, if Staples decides to play dumb like he did with the Dallas Morning News Editorial Board when he claimed that he didn't really know what happened to the inspector in the Plainview peanut case, and that he wasn't even involved in deciding what happened to that inspector or in that case, that's fine, because if he actually stands up and admits that he was sitting in his office with his hands over his eyes and cotton in his ears pretending to see and hear no evil, then he further proves his worthlessness as a public official. If you are in charge of an agency like this and something like this happens, if you say you didn't know about it, you either aren't paying attention to what's going on, or you are lying."