Batt Shuts Lab Panned By Experts

Gov. Phil Batt on Monday halted operations at the Agriculture Department’s Quality Assurance Laboratory after experts from Idaho, Oregon and Montana raised questions about its operations.

Gregory Moller of the University of Idaho said the problems are so serious that much of the information produced by the Twin Falls laboratory “would probably not withstand a serious challenge.

“This may present problems for regulatory enforcement and the protection of the public health,” Moller wrote in his review.

Batt said he took the action on the recommendation of the Agriculture Department so it could further investigate the reviews by Moller at Idaho and experts from the agriculture departments in Oregon and Montana.

“We anticipate this review prior to the end of the year,” Batt said in a terse statement.

But the criticism, most pointedly from Moller, was only the latest involving the laboratory that was built with $2 million in taxpayer money on the promise from the farm industry that they would support it fully through fees paid to have commodities tested.

Since it was completed in 1993, however, the facility’s supporters, particularly otherwise frugal Republicans from the Magic Valley, have cajoled colleagues into pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to keep the laboratory running.

All three experts who reviewed the operation agreed that it appeared to be under-used and they cited instances where practices at the laboratory were either convoluted or failed to follow generally accepted procedures.

But Moller was the harshest in his criticism. Interviews with former and current chemists and other employees at the facility found complaints of faulty report information and hazardous waste dumping.

Moller said his review found that the laboratory’s reports to customers who submitted commodities for pesticide analysis included evaluations for all listed substances even though there was no evidence to support those evaluations for between 30 percent and 52 percent of the substances cited.