Peanut paste CEO takes the 5th

Peanut Corp. of America owner Stewart Parnell - represented by (you can't make this stuff up) one Bill O'Reilly - pleaded the 5th and refused to answer questions during a House Energy & Commerce Committee hearing concerning the nationwide salmonella outbreak. Apparently Bill O'Reilly cut his mic.

Really. He won't talk? He was pretty free with his opinions via email.

According to an AP story that appeared in Forbes:

Salmonella problems were so common at a Georgia peanut plant that the company's owner seemingly shrugged them off in e-mails.

"I go thru this about once a week. ... I will hold my breath .......... again," Peanut Corp. of America president Stewart Parnell wrote last June.

The e-mail was in response to information from an employee about a positive test for the bacteria that may have killed nine and sickened 600 people in an outbreak traced to the company's Blakely, Ga., plant.

The document was among several released by House investigators on Wednesday contradicting what little the company has said publicly about problems dating to 2006 at its plant.

Parnell's Oct. 6, 2008 e-mail to his Georgia plant manager Sammy Lightsey detailing a different positive test for salmonella in 441 cases of peanut granules, some of which had already been shipped out, concentrated on money, not safety.

"We need to discuss this ... the time lapse, besides the cost is costing us huge $$$$$ and causing obviously a huge lapse in time from the time we pick up peanuts until the time we can invoice," Parnell wrote. "We need to protect our self and the problem is that the tests absolutely give us no protection, just an indication at best."

One set of documents show Peanut Corp. issued a "certificate of analysis" last June for a sample of peanut products, assuring that the peanuts were free of salmonella. However, that batch of nuts got one positive test for salmonella from one lab and a negative finding from another.

Soon after that, Peanut Corp. stopped using the positive-testing lab for regular checks, saying they didn't like the lab's results, according to Darlene Cowart of JLA USA testing service, the Albany, Ga., lab dumped by Parnell's company.

Instead of cleaning up his business after finding salmonella, he fired the company that found the tainted peanuts.

And now he won't talk. Fine. Perhaps its time for this to go to court. I'd like to see some jail-time come out of this one.

The People of the United States vs. Stewart Parnell. I'll be waiting to see this case prosecuted legally, in front of a jury of his peanut-eating peers. This man obviously knows he is guilty as hell; and people died because of it.

Nuts to that!

Haven't been paying attention? No kidding.

“It’s easy to fall into the trap of seeing our food safety problems as coming from other countries,” said Robert Tauxe, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official who helped trace the outbreak to the Blakely plant. “This outbreak is telling us we haven’t been paying enough attention.”

Ya think?

The New York Times has a written a relatively comprehensive piece on the peanut butter recall. Rather than break into another 'oversight and protection are dead in this country' rant... I'll let them handle it:

Peanut Case Shows Holes in Safety Net
By MICHAEL MOSS

BLAKELY, Ga. — Raw peanuts were stored next to the finished peanut butter. The roaster was not calibrated to kill deadly germs. Dispirited workers on minimum wage, supplied by temp agencies, donned their uniforms at home, potentially dragging contaminants into the plant, which also had rodents.

Even the roof of the Peanut Corporation of America plant here in rural southwest Georgia was an obvious risk, given that salmonella thrives in water and the facility should have been kept bone dry.

“It leaked when it rained,” said Frank Hardrick, 40, an assistant manager who, along with four other workers, described life inside the plant. “Different crews would come in to work on it, but it would still leak.”

The conditions at the plant, more circa 1955 than 2009, would have been enough to cause alarm in an industry where sanitation can be a matter of life and death, food experts said.

But they were only one element in the salmonella outbreak and subsequent food safety train wreck that started here and swept through the country — claiming eight lives, sickening an estimated 19,000 people in 43 states and spurring an array of recalls, including TV dinners, snack bars labeled organic and ready-made meals for disaster relief.

An examination of the Blakely case reveals a badly frayed food safety net. Interviews and government records show that state and federal inspectors do not require the peanut industry to inform the public — or even the government — of salmonella contamination in its plants. And industry giants like Kellogg used processed peanuts in a variety of products but relied on the factory to perform safety testing and divulge any problems.

At the same time, processed peanuts have been finding their way into more and more foods as a low-cost yet tasty additive, making tainted products harder to track.

Read more...

Rodents! Hard to imagine salmonella thriving in a leaking factory infested with rats.

Murder by peanut butter

If all men were just, there still would be some, though not so much, need of government. - Abraham Lincoln

They knew.

The company that distributed the contaminated peanut butter knew it had tested positive for salmonella... and sent it out anyway.

Eight people have now died, over 500 are sick, and the FDA is still trying to track down every resulting food that contains the contaminated peanut butter.

I call that murder. The owners of this peanut company should be tried for negligent homicide (at the very least.)

Peanut Corporation of America, in Blakely, Georgia. Murderers.

Perhaps things will be different under Mr. Obama's Administration. Perhaps now there will be CONSEQUENCES for knowingly killing American citizens and pets.

FDA Alleges Company Knowingly Sold Peanut Products Containing Salmonella

KRIS-TV
updated 18 minutes ago

GEORGIA - There is new information available about the recent salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter from a plant in Georgia.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said at least 12 times over the past two years the Peanut Corporation of America has knowingly sold products that had tested positive for salmonella.

The FDA also claimed the company did nothing to improve its manufacturing and sanitation practices after salmonella was found in its plant, and that is a clear violation of the law.

Consumer advocates are outraged at the new revelations.

"This kind of lab-shopping is absolutely shocking, and it really shows that the FDA's program is inadequate to protect American consumers," Sarah Klein said, who works for the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Oh, and we need a new FDA. The old one is broken.

The FDA admits that this same company shipped out salmonella-contaminated peanut butter in 2007 and 2008. Apparently - having gotten away with it, with no repercussions from the FDA - they decided to continue. With deadly results.

This is why we need consequences; oversight with consequences.

I still cannot fathom how the ruling GOP believed that their watered down FDA could simply tell these greedy corporations "now be good boys - don't do that again" and the corporations would immediately and willingly comply.

Of course they didn't comply! Why would they comply when they could easily get away with it? We aren't dealing with Mother Teresa here. This is why our Federal Government is forced to exercise oversight of corporations that produce the food we eat -- because they won't willingly do it themselves if they can avoid the cost. And once caught, they will simply do the same thing again... unless they are fined, thrown in jail or closed down.

Consequences.

Somehow the GOP recognizes that regular citizens should go to jail for committing crimes, and especially murder (and they believe staunchly in the death penalty for crimes committed by the great unwashed.) If crime isn't punished, society breaks down. But when a corporation commits a crime, or kills American people with their poisoned products, they look the other way.

And because they looked the other way for eight long years, today hundreds of children are sick - and more will undoubtedly die - because their peanut butter was distributed by a company that knew it was poisoned, but didn't bother making a new batch.

That should tell us all we need to know about the GOP. They don't represent us; they represent the wealthy elite and the corporations that donate to their campaigns. Different standards apply (in this case, no standards at all.)

The government Tuesday accused the peanut butter manufacturer tied to a nationwide salmonella outbreak of shipping products in 2007 and 2008 after internal tests found bacterial contamination, violating food safety regulations.

Peanut butter and peanut paste manufactured by the Peanut Corp. of America (PCA) has been tied to the salmonella outbreak that has sickened 501 people in 43 states and is believed to have contributed to eight deaths.

The Food and Drug Administration said that its inspection of the PCA plant in Blakely, Ga., found records of 12 instances in which plant officials identified salmonella in ingredients or finished products. The products should not have been shipped, the FDA says. PCA took no steps to address cleaning after finding the salmonella, says Michael Rogers, director of the FDA's division of field investigations.

(Hint to the FDA: This is where you force them to clean up their act, or close them down.)

"It's incredibly negligent," says William Hubbard, a former FDA associate commissioner. Hubbard questions why the FDA didn't act sooner, given the sanitation violations found by state inspectors.

Previous inspection reports by the Georgia Department of Agriculture found deficiencies in how well the plant was cleaned.

Death by peanut butter

Yes, the latest poisoned food outbreak has been traced to peanuts. Yes, people are dying.

This time the poison didn't originate in China; but this is one more example of what the dismantling of government oversight (i.e. our FDA) under the Bush Administration has done for America. It has made us, our kids, and our animals sick... over and over again. Sometimes it has killed us.

And for what? So that corporations can save a few bucks by avoiding a lot of expensive (and formerly mandated) safety reviews.

Our FDA was still there under the Bush Administration, but only a shell of its former self... with Bushies in high places 'looking busy,' curtailing any 'invasive' oversight, and making corporate donors very happy.

Very nice for the corporations. Very bad for consumers.

I hope Mr. Bush doesn't like a nice PB&J when he's out clearing brush.

With nearly 500 confirmed cases of salmonella across the country -- six of which occurred in Indiana -- the Food and Drug Administration has created a Web site that lists products containing potentially contaminated peanut butter.

The site, which includes pet food, can be found at http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/peanutbutterrecall/ and will be updated on a regular basis.

All of the products are associated with a recall of peanut butter made by the Peanut Corporation of America.

Since September, at least 491 people in 43 states have developed salmonella after eating contaminated products. The bacteria may have caused seven deaths.