http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20071 ... 90337/1011

Tests show employees were exposed to TB
RUSSELLVILLE
Last Updated:November 08. 2007 11:24PM
Published: November 09. 2007 3:30AM

Tuberculosis skin tests conducted Tuesday on 178 employees at the Pilgrim's Pride plant in Russellville have revealed that 51 employees have been exposure to the disease.

The tests were conducted as a precaution by the state health department after it was learned that a former employee may have had TB.

Dr. Karen Landers, area health officer at the Northwest Alabama Regional Health Department, said chest X-rays have been taken of those 51 individuals and would be read to determine if there is the presence of tuberculosis.

"Of all who had a positive test, not one gave a history of symptoms - fever, night sweats, a cough," she said. "A positive skin test doesn't always mean the person has tuberculosis. A few of these could also be false positives."

Landers said she expected final results by early next week.

The former employee who may have had TB has not worked at the plant for more than seven months, officials said.

ABOUT THE COMPANY

http://www.pilgrimspride.com/aboutus/default.aspx


From Humble Beginnings to Industry Leader
For six decades, Pilgrim's Pride has produced healthy, high-quality food products that go into some of the world's finest recipes. In fact, we developed a number of those recipes ourselves, so consumers of our products could enjoy and benefit from them to the fullest. Now we have developed a new recipe - one to enhance the quality and health of our company and all its stakeholders.

Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation (NYSE: PPC) is the largest chicken company in the U.S. and the second-largest in Mexico. Since completing the acquisition of Gold Kist in late 2006, Pilgrim’s Pride's consolidated annual net sales are approximately $7.4 billion.
Pilgrim's Pride is currently ranked #432 on the Fortune 500 list of largest U.S. corporations.
Pilgrim's Pride employs approximately 55,500 people in the U.S. and Mexico.
Major facilities are in Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Puerto Rico and Mexico; other facilities are in Arizona, Iowa, Mississippi, Ohio and Utah.
The company currently processes approximately 44 million birds per week for a total of more than 9 billion pounds of poultry per year.
Pilgrim’s Pride products are sold to foodservice, retail and frozen entrée customers. The company’s primary distribution is through retailers, foodservice distributors and restaurants throughout the United States and Puerto Rico and in the Northern and Central regions of Mexico.
Pilgrim's Pride owns and operates 37 chicken processing plants (34 in the U.S. and three in Mexico), 12 prepared-foods plants and one turkey processing plant. Thirty-five feed mills and 49 hatcheries support these plants.
Approximately 7,300 growers supply poultry for the company’s operations.
EggsPlusâ„¢, our healthier alternative to the ordinary egg, has all the great nutrients a normal egg has to offer plus increased levels of Vitamin E, Lutein and Omega-3 essential fatty acids, which have been proven to reduce the risk of heart attack, cardiac sudden death and stroke.
Pilgrim’s Pride produces 44 million dozen table eggs per year and can produce up to 1 million dozen eggs per week during peak holiday seasons.
In Mt. Pleasant, Texas, Pilgrim's Pride operates one of the largest prepared-foods plants in the United States, with the capability of producing 2,000 different products and the capacity to turn out more than 7 million pounds of finished goods per week.
The company’s Live Oak, Florida, facility recently completed an 180,000-square-foot expansion, which includes advanced air-chilling technology to process chickens that are antibiotic-free and raised on an all-vegetable diet. This new premium product line supplies the growing natural foods retail supermarket segment.
The company's further-processing facilities have the combined capacity to process more than 1 billion pounds of product per year.
Pilgrim's Pride owns and operates 20 distribution centers in the U.S. and 18 in Mexico.
The company's distribution center located near Pittsburg, Texas, features a state-of-the-art, fully automated, 40-million-pound capacity freezer featuring RFID and GPS technologies, allowing worldwide inventory tracking.
Plants in Mexico are strategically located to serve 75 percent of all Mexican consumers.
The company exports commodity chicken products to more than 70 countries, including China, Japan, Kazakhstan and Russia.
Pilgrim’s Feed manufactures more than 155,000 tons of high-quality bulk and bagged feed per year for livestock and show animals.
The retail Fridge-to-Freezer Pakâ„¢, which separates chicken parts into individual vacuum-sealed pockets, was selected as an “Editor’s Pickâ€