GOLDTHWAITE (June 8, 2009)-The co-owner of a Central Texas-based business that hired out mentally disabled workers as laborers in turkey processing plants in Iowa says the firm didn't violate labor laws.

Henry's Turkey Service, a subsidiary of Hill Country Farms based in Goldthwaite, employed and cared for nearly two dozen men who worked at an eastern Iowa meatpacking facility.

Iowa state investigators removed 21 mentally disabled men from a dilapidated bunkhouse at the facility and doled out $900,000 in fines to Hill Country Farms, alleging labor-law violations.

Kenneth Henry rejected criticism they were treated as slaves and said the payroll deductions were legal because the men needed round-the-clock care, The Dallas Morning News reported in its online edition Sunday.

Federal investigators, including the U.S. Justice Department, FBI and U.S. Labor Department, have since seized company records.

Henry thinks the documents will clear his business.

"People think that we got rich out of this deal, but we haven't," Henry said.

Henry’s partner, Thurman Johnson, already experienced in the poultry industry, was contracted by the State of Texas in the mid-1960s to teach job and independent living skills to mentally disabled men until his death last year.

Operations expanded into other states, including Iowa, in the early 1970s.

For more than four decades, Johnson and Henry cared for hundreds of mentally disabled Texans and profited from their labor with the knowledge of state and federal authorities.