Supporters Of Food Safety Lab Attack Scientists For Harsh Review

The scientist most critical of operations at the state’s food-safety laboratory is defending his negative assessment against claims he is biased against the Twin Falls facility.

Supporters of the Quality Assurance Laboratory suggested Gregory Moller’s evaluation differed so dramatically in tone from evaluations of experts from the Montana and Oregon agriculture departments because the Analytical Sciences Laboratory Moller runs at the University of Idaho has some of the same capabilities.

“It’s clearly a question we have had in our minds as we looked at those other reports,” said Mike Everett, Agriculture Department administrator for the division of marketing and development.

While Laszlo Torma in Montana and Nels Pedersen in Oregon raised questions about procedural documentation and worker training, Moller cited instances of analytical reports that were not supported by actual testing and possibly illegal disposal of chemicals and solvents.

He maintained his review was harsher because he had access to information Torma and Pedersen did not - information that at one point he had to prevail on Gov. Phil Batt to obtain for him from Agriculture Director John Hatch. That was a situation Batt labeled as intolerable earlier this week as uncertainty mounted over Hatch’s future in the administration.

Moller, Torma and Pederson were asked to conduct the review by Hatch after Batt said he was not satisfied with the director’s original proposal to conduct an internal review of problems at the laboratory.

“Number one, I’d like it to be known that it is always popular sport to shoot the messenger,” Moller said. “Number two, I was invited to review this program. Number three, if there is some accusation about bias, I have a bias toward what’s good in science or Idaho agriculture.”

The laboratory has been at the center of political controversy ever since its backers reneged on their promise that they would never seek taxpayer subsidies to run it. They originally said if the state put up the $2 million to build it, the operational budget would be financed by user fees from testing. But those fees have never reached the level promised and taxpayer subsidies, now running about $150,000 a year, have been provided since before the lab opened for business nearly three years ago.

When the project was being developed, there were discussions about putting it under the University of Idaho’s Department of Food Science and Toxicology, according to government budget analysts, but Moller rejected that approach once it became clear the state had no intention of financing its annual operation.

The project was then turned over to the Agriculture Department, but the bar on operating subsidies from taxpayers was never imposed.

State Sen. Laird Noh of Kimberly, the Republican Resource and Environment Committee chairman who brought the lab’s problems to Batt’s attention a year ago, stood by Moller.

“I have a great deal of respect for his ability and his ethics,” Noh said.

Before Batt temporarily shut it down on Monday, the Quality Assurance Laboratory tests commodities, primarily potatoes, for pesticide levels and other chemical residues.