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 of
Criminal 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 textured
vegetable 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 will
never 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 sure
of 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.