Plastic pallets take on wooden pallets in Intelligent Global Pooling Systems lawsuit

It appears that Intelligent Global Pooling Systems (iGPS) has had enough. The company, which offers a pallet rental service providing all-plastic pallets with embedded RFID (radio frequency identification) tags, filed suit on Dec. 10 against the National Wooden Pallet & Container Association (NWPCA) and its President and CEO, Bruce N. Scholnick, in the District Court of Dallas, TX. iGPS is seeking “actual, consequential and punitive damages for the false and defamatory statements to harm iGPS and its business.” This is just the latest in a series of ongoing jabs between iGPS and the NWPCA in the battle between wood and plastic pallets.
   
The Orlando-based iGPS filed suit against the NWPCA for “false, malicious and defamatory statements suggesting that iGPS pallets may be the cause of recent butter contamination in the Dallas area. In checking out several resources linked on the NWPCA’s web site, the contaminated butter at issue in this latest round seems to have nothing to do with plastic pallets.
   
One resource cited by the NWPCA was WebMD in a Dec. 7 article that noted “Extremely high levels of a fire retardant found in a sample of butter show the need for better monitoring of the nation’s food supply, researchers say.
   
“Levels of the chemical retardant polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) in the sample were 135 times higher than the average for nine other tested samples. Researchers say the contamination appears to have come from the butter’s paper wrapper, which had PBDE levels that were more than 16 times greater than levels in the butter.
   
“The contamination was discovered during a routing sampling of various foods in an effort to better understand the prevalence of PBDE and other chemical contaminants in the foods we eat. Investigators say the incident represents the worst documented case of PBDE contamination in food ever reported in the U.S.”
   
However, lead researcher Arnold Schecter MD said that, “may be because no one is really looking for the flame retardant or related chemicals in the nation’s food supply.” The study of the butter was published in the journal "Environmental Health Perspectives," published by the National Institutes of Health.
   
The American Chemistry Council weighed in on the controversy, with Kathryn St. John, director of product/panel communications, saying, “This is an invalid, unscientific study of 10 sticks of butter from one city; it is inappropriate for a federal agency publication under the cloak of science to use citizens’ tax dollars to legitimize it.”
   
Another article that appeared in the Rodale News (Emmaus, PA), a health magazine, noted that the 10 butter samples, and specifically the paper wrappers, that contained PBDE was of the type used in electronics, “leading the authors [of the study] to conclude that the food packaging was likely a primary source of contamination. It’s likely the packaging was contaminated by electronics before it reached the butter processing plant, Dr. Schecter says. He isn’t sure how, but one possibility could be that the chemicals came from the printer that gives butter wrappers those handy tablespoon markings and the company’s branding logos,” said the Rodale publication.
   
However long a stretch it may be, the NWPCA took this opportunity to post on its website information linking the PBDE in the butter to iGPS’s pallets, which contain the flame-retardant as a safety measure. On December 8, 2010, the NWPCA issued a press release titled “Plastic Pallets Should be Investigated in Butter Contamination Scandal” claiming the iGPS pallets are a “root source” of the butter contamination.
   
iGPS says in its suit that while the actual source of the contamination appears to be the paper wrapper, the NWPCA has not retracted the release. iGPS also claims that none of iGPS customers used its pallets to ship butter.
   
In a letter to iGPS’s customers that went out on Dec. 9, Chairman and CEO Bob Moore stated that “iGPS pallets are not involved in this matter in any way, and the NWPCA’s veiled suggestion that they are is just one more dishonest and reckless statement from the leadership of an organization that is desperate to hinder competition and innovation in the pallet industry.
   
“Had the leadership of the NWPCA been interested in the truth, rather than irresponsible accusations, it could easily have determined that the manufacturer of the butter in question is not a customer of iGPS and that the products were shipped on wood pallets, not pallets from iGPS. Not only were iGPS pallets uninvolved with the shipment of this product, but the safety of our pallet has also been repeatedly confirmed by independent tests. In short, no product contamination has ever been linked to our pallet.”
   
The NWPCA responded to the lawsuit in a statement on its homepage, “The NWPCA is comfortable that the data distributed in our recent news release is supportable and founded on credible sources of evidence. We believe the lawsuit by Intelligent Global Pooling Systems is a distraction meant to draw attention from the core of what NWPCA is advocating, which is to have a zero tolerance for all polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardant in the food and pharmaceutical industries.” —Clare Goldsberry