controversial product bought for state prisons: texans urged introduction of soy meat substitute

7/23/2019 Controversial product bought for state prisons: Texans urged introduction of soy meat substitute

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Controversial product bought for state prisons: Texans urged introduction

of soy meat substitute

JAMES MINTON

Publication Date: April 21, 1996

The top Texas state prison boss and a politically connected Houston man helped

persuade Louisiana prison officials to buy 20 tons of a soy-based meat substitute

last year.

Louisiana prisons used only a small portion of the meat substitute, and more than

17 tons of it remain in warehouses.

Questions about purchases of the same product in Texas led to criminal

investigations there by the Texas Rangers and FBI, as well as a lawsuit to cancel a

multimillion-dollar purchase contract.

The Texas prison system's executive director, Andy Collins, also decided to retire

shortly after the governor and Prison Board began asking questions about his

apparent involvement in a private juvenile prison venture in Louisiana.

In another development, FBI agents and Houston authorities arrested the man

who brokered the Louisiana sales, Patrick Graham, in connection with an alleged

plot to help a murderer escape from a Texas prison.

Graham is accused of fraud and accepting laundered money in a plan to use his

political connections in the escape. News reports also link Graham to the juvenile

facility planned in LaSalle Parish.

Meanwhile, some Louisiana inmates voiced distrust of the VitaPro brand of

textured vegetable protein - which some said tastes bad.

Poor sales left prison warehouses holding more than 17 tons of the unused

product this month.

The issue also left a bad taste in the mouth of a distributor of a competing

product, who submitted the apparent low bid for up to 480 tons a year of the

product, only to have the bids canceled.

The meat alternative bought last year is manufactured by VitaPro Foods Inc. of

Montreal, Canada, and includes textured soy protein,dried vegetables, spices and



other ingredients in a granular form. Mixed with water, it forms a foodstuff

resembling ground meat or chicken intended for use in soups, chili, spaghetti

sauce, burger patties and other dishes.

"It tastes like wet cardboard," said a Louisiana State Penitentiary inmate who

wrote The Advocate about a mid-December taste test Graham and VitaPro owner

Yank Barry arranged for inmate leaders at the Angola prison.

"I beg to differ. The chicken salad was good; the burger was not so good,"

Angola Warden Burl Cain said.

"It's not really that bad, but it leaves an aftertaste in your mouth," said Dixon

Correctional Institute acting Warden James M. LeBlanc.

Without bids or prison board approval, Collins obligated the Texas Department ofCriminal Justice to buy up to $33 million of VitaPro over a five-year period,

according to Texas news reports.

The department's agriculture and industrial arm, Texas Corrections Industries, was

to sell and distribute VitaPro to other prison systems.

Collins and Graham touted the virtues of VitaPro in contacts with Louisiana Prison

Enterprises, a division of the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections,

according to Louisiana officials.

Prison Enterprises, which furnishes most of the food used in state prisons and

sells a variety of other products to state agencies, paid$164,331 for the VitaPro

bought last year.

"Demand by the prisons for this product is rapidly increasing, and we are

beginning to market it to hospitals as well," Prison Enterprises Director Charles

Kleinpeter wrote on Sept. 15 to request bids on chicken-flavored VitaPro.

Prison Enterprises then moved to buy up to 960,000 pounds per year of texturedvegetable protein, suggesting VitaPro as the vendor.

While the State Purchasing Office worked to prepare the bid contract request last

fall, Texas officials learned Collins had set up a Louisiana company, Professional

Care of America, apparently to provide rehabilitation services at the proposed

LaSalle Parish juvenile facility.



Former Houston Mayor Fred Hofheinz and his company, Viewpoint Hospital

Administrators, have pushed the project for several years,and Hofheinz is listed as

an officer of Collins' corporation.

Texas officials pressured Collins to resign his $120,000 a year job because of his

ties to the LaSalle Parish project and were further angered when VitaPro hired

Collins at $1,000 a day on Jan. 1,the day after his retirement took effect,

according to Texas news reports.

Graham was arrested on Jan. 4. Collins quit VitaPro on Feb. 27 at Barry's request,

said Peggy Hubble, a spokeswoman for the VitaPro owner.

She said Barry, a Canadian citizen, was unaware of ethical questions regarding

Collins' employment so soon after his retirement.

As the events in Texas unfolded, Lumen Foods of Lake Charles submitted a bid to

Prison Enterprises for textured vegetable protein,with prices more than a dollar

per pound cheaper than VitaPro's.

But Prison Enterprises' enthusiasm for meat substitutes was waning.

The agency asked State Purchasing to delay evaluating the bids in late January,

then Kleinpeter canceled further action on the bids Feb. 1.

"When we first started researching the product, there seemed to be a lot of

enthusiasm among our customers regarding the product and its advantages,"

Kleinpeter told state purchasing officials.

"However, the two one-time bulk shipments we bid out and received have not

been selling as well as we had hoped," he said.

Lumen Foods owner Gregory J. Caton charged that Prison Enterprises did not

award him the contract because it favored VitaPro.

Caton also was miffed to learn that someone called the state purchasing officials

to influence the bid evaluations, saying Caton was a convicted felon and had

several large lawsuits pending against him, including one in Houston.



Caton said he was convicted in 1989 of conspiracy in connection with a

counterfeiting operation but served no jail time.

He said he has a libel suit pending against him as a result of a book he wrote on

multilevel marketing fraud, but continues to discuss the subject through a

computer home page on the World Wide Web.

In another twist, Texas newspapers reported last month that Barry,a former

Canadian entertainer whose real name is Gerald Barry Falovitch, in 1985 served

10 months of a six-year sentence in Canada for extortion and conspiracy.

Barry said he did not hide his criminal record in his dealings with Texas

corrections officials, according to the news reports.

Caton, who described himself as the "quintessential whistle blower," said he willnever again seek state business in Louisiana.

"I could have saved the state money. People will have to decide if that's the way

they want the state run," he said.

Kleinpeter termed Caton's reaction "unfortunate," but denied his agency favored

VitaPro.

"We found that, while we sold some (to Louisiana prisons), the demand just

wasn't there for it," Kleinpeter said.

Kleinpeter acknowledged the allegations against Collins and Graham caused

Louisiana corrections officials "some concern," but said the reluctance of prison

wardens to use the product was the overriding factor.

"Any time there's an investigation or controversy surrounding a product we use

or people we deal with, we have some concern," Kleinpeter said.

"Andy Collins came over with Pat Graham on several occasions, but I'm not sureof what his capacity was. At the time, he was still on the (Texas) payroll. He spoke

highly of VitaPro," Kleinpeter said.

"But our biggest contact with VitaPro was through Graham," he added.

Corrections Secretary Richard Stalder said he is neither for nor against VitaPro



but believes the concept of soy substitutes for religious or special diets should be

explored, as well as their occasional use in regular prison meals.

Stalder said he does not believe VitaPro's price - $4.10 per pound- was low

enough to interest other agencies, and Prison Enterprises showed "good

management to try it and also to get out."

Stalder also said he is unaware of any corporation Collins may have formed in

connection with the LaSalle Parish project.

Viewpoint indicated it would use Collins' operational expertise to run the LaSalle

facility upon his retirement, "which we would perceive favorably," Stalder said.

"But we don't know whether he was or wasn't working for VitaPro," Stalder

added.

At the time, Texas Corrections Industries was a VitaPro distributor and Louisiana

officials had no reason to question Collins' enthusiasm for the product, Stalder

said.

LeBlanc, who serves as corrections undersecretary as well as DCI warden, said he

was puzzled about Collins' involvement.

"I thought to myself, 'how in the world could he (Collins) be working for the Texas

DOC and represent a private company?'" LeBlanc said of Collins' pitches for

VitaPro.

"He said he was retiring, so I guess we thought he was no longer with them,"

LeBlanc added.

LeBlanc said his prison used eight 33-pound pails of VitaPro for four meals and

had one pail left on April 4.

"It really didn't take off," LeBlanc said.

Barry said Collins had nothing to do with the two Louisiana sales- Graham was

the broker, "as we all know."

Barry said, however, he would not be surprised if Louisiana backed off from the

contract because of the Texas controversy.



VitaPro entered the Louisiana State Penitentiary at a time when inmates still had

lingering suspicions about Cain's ties to private enterprises because of a

controversy over a canned goods relabeling plant at the Angola prison.

Cain said, however, "VitaPro wasn't my deal," adding the product was in the

prison system before he heard about it.

Although he has met Collins three times, Cain said, they are not personal friends.

Cain said he is concerned Angola inmates serving lengthy sentences eat too

much fatty, starchy foods.

He said he thought VitaPro might serve as an occasional meat substitute because

of its high protein and low fat qualities, but after considering the idea, he decided

to limit its use to meals served inmates on special diets.

controversial product bought for state prisons: texans urged introduction of soy meat substitute

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