Tuberculosis

Alabama health officials have identified 212 workers who have tested positive for tuberculosis at a single poultry plant owned by one of the largest processors in the U.S.

In two batteries of skin tests last month, given to 765 fresh processing employees at the Decatur, Ala., plant owned by Wayne Farms LLC by the State Department of Public Health's Tuberculosis Control Division, 28 percent were found to be infected, including one with active tuberculosis disease, which is contagious. Doctors have yet to evaluate X-rays for 165 current workers who tested positive to determine if any more are contagious.

The testing was prompted by an earlier active TB case – a former Wayne Farms worker.

Both employees with active TB are Hispanics born in countries where the disease is prevalent, heath officials said. Scott Jones, interim director of the Tuberculosis Control Division told the Decatur Daily he was not surprised at the large number of employees who tested positive.

"The majority of the folks that we're dealing with in this situation are foreign born," Jones said. "I would expect about 30 percent of them to test positive."

I've said it before... these illegals swarming across our border... the ignorant, the sick, the uneducated and the unwanted poor of Mexico sneaking into our nation are bringing back diseases we had eliminated decades ago.

It's another one of those hidden costs we are paying for Bush's open borders experiment.

NOW HERE'S ANOTHER SHOCKER:

Stan Hayman, sales and marketing director for Wayne Farms, told Huntsville's WHNT-TV News the company was looking for ways to pre-test employees before they're hired but said the law imposed limits on what could be done. Said Stan:

The laws today don't truly allow for pre-employment screening. You know HIV and all of these over the years have built cases where personal information is very guarded. So we struggle a little bit with the laws today to say can we truly implement a pre-screening, pre-employment process

Imagine that. Those individuals with HIV/AIDS have managed to get laws passed that forbid the testing of potential employess for deadly diseases, even in our food porcessing plants.

At what point do we finally decide we've had enough?