Fines DeCoster has paid over the years include:
- $1.5 million to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 2003 to resolve charges of sexual harassment and rape by company supervisors, reports Lynda Waddington of the Iowa Independent.
- $2.1 million in 2003, accompanying a guilty plea on charges of knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. (In subsequent years, immigration raids found dozens of undocumented workers.)
- $3.5 million in 1996, for mistreatment of workers at egg farms in Maine, reported The New York Times.
In September, Bethel, DeCoster, and his son Peter DeCoster appeared before the House Energy and Commerce oversight and investigations subcommittee. Bethel declined to answer questions, citing the Fifth Amendment. The younger Mr. DeCoster, now CEO of Wright County Egg, claimed that the salmonella contamination must have been caused by externally supplied food.
At that congressional hearing, the elder DeCoster addressed concerns about his farms. “We were horrified to learn that our eggs may have made people sick," he said in the statement he read to the subcommittee. "We apologize to every one who may have been sickened by eating our eggs. I pray several times each day for all of them and for their improved health."
