RAIFORD - State prison officials deny allegations that death row inmates are being sickened by rotten food.
Prison officials received complaints from 26 death row inmates in Raiford about the noon meal last Saturday, but the allegations are "baseless and untrue," Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections in Tallahassee, said Friday.
While the meal containing beef, onions, squash and oranges was not pleasant to smell, Ivey said there was nothing wrong with the food.
A group working to better conditions on death row disagrees.
"The latest report we got was from death row, telling us the food stunk so bad that they could not eat it," said Hannah Floyd, of the Florida Death Row Advocacy Group.
"These are human beings. They must eat. And recently they are being left with the choice to either eat and get sick, or go hungry to bed," Floyd said.
Warden Paul Decker, who was at the prison Saturday, went to the kitchen to check on the meal and decided there was nothing wrong, officials said. The entire 1,800-inmate prison ate the meal as well as the prison staff, and no one reported getting sick.
Floyd also said Aramark, the company that provides food services to Florida inmates, had cut the size of the portions so that inmates are going hungry.
But Ivey said the most recent contract with the company called for an increase in the size of portions served to inmates.
