In an emotional and somewhat sensational court hearing, Jack DeCoster, owner of Wright County Egg, an Iowa egg farm that has caused a nationwide salmonella outbreak, apologized. "We were horrified to learn that our eggs may have made people sick," said DeCoster, "We apologize to everyone who may have been sickened by eating our eggs."
Regardless, the angry Senators, upset salmonella sickness victims, and protesting environmentalists who eventually were escorted from the court room did not appear sympathetic to DeCoster's business' growing pains.
DeCoster described the violations as complicated, and spread the blame between the weather and contamination in an ingredient they use in their chicken feed. Helena Bottemiller of Food Safety News points out that "the dozens of positive environmental tests, rodents, loose chickens, and open piles of manure the FDA found make it difficult to pinpoint the mode of contamination."