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Company: Thefts led to collapse

Workers provided bull semen to competitors, firm’s co-owner alleges.

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By Brandon Smith-Hebson, Staff Writer 10:27 PM Friday, February 3, 2012

One owner of a troubled Springfield livestock semen-storage business blamed former employees for the company’s downfall during a bankruptcy hearing in Dayton on Friday.

RC Agrigenetics, which did business in Springfield as Genetic Connection, filed for bankruptcy protection in December.

Ralph E. Clark, part owner with his nephew, Roger A. Clark, said employees “were doing deals under the table.”

“They gave (our) semen to a competitor ... Basically they were working for another company,” Ralph Clark said. “They had worked behind our back the whole time.”

Genetic Connection’s creditors include the U.S. Small Business Administration, which loaned the company $536,000 from the stimulus package in 2009, and Clark County, which says the company owes $16,000 in property taxes.

The business is being sold to pay debts, in whole or in pieces, Ralph Clark said.

The company kept bulls to harvest their semen, stored the semen in liquid nitrogen, and shipped tubes of it to whoever bought it from the bulls’ owners.

Genetic Connection attorney Daniel Hunter did not name the former employees.

When the company’s two biggest clients found out about the employees, Ralph Clark said the clients “took their bulls.”

No bulls are kept by the company now, but the facilities at 5001 E. County Line Road still house some semen.

The process of returning semen to its owners is “going a little slower than we’d like it to,” Hunter said. Most clients are out of state, local farmers said.

As for the money owed the federal government, “our intention is to pay back the loan,” Hunter said.

Neither Hunter nor Ralph Clark would say whether any of the loan was repaid during the two years the business operated. During the hearing, they said the company carried $1.4 million in debt between the SBA and a $916,000 mortgage with a bank in West Virginia. That leaves more than $500,000 owed to the SBA.

Shannon Feucht, an SBA staff member, wrote in an email Thursday that the agency would send a staff member to the hearing. No one from SBA attended.

Repaying the creditors will depend on how much Clark can earn selling the business’ 143 acres, building and equipment, Hunter told the U.S. attorney during the hearing.

Along with the mortgage written in West Virginia, the SBA’s loans are secured loans, which will get paid first.

Smaller businesses that provided services on credit to Genetic Connection — such as a Yellow Springs-based veterinarian — will be further down the line.

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0353 or at bsmith@coxinc.com.

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