Puttin profits from peanut butter before health of customers

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/30/us/peanut-salmonella-trial/


By Moni Basu, CNN
updated 8:11 AM EDT, Sat August 30, 2014


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Shirley Mae Almer, 72, survived lung cancer and a brain tumor. But not peanut butter.

One of America's favorite foods -- tainted with salmonella -- killed her, just four days before Christmas in 2008.

Her grief-stricken son opened the presents she'd left for him under the tree: a shirt and a GPS device. He's thankful now that he can't quite remember which shirt it was. He doesn't want to be reminded.

His mother's death spurred Almer to become a public face for the fight for tougher food safety regulations. Now, he awaits justice.

The salmonella-laced product Shirley Almer consumed was traced back to peanuts produced at Peanut Corp. of America, a plant in the "Peanut Proud" town of Blakely, Georgia.

Stewart Parnell, the man who owned and ran Peanut Corp., is facing prosecution in an unprecedented criminal trial in Albany, about an hour's drive from the now boarded-up plant.

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The Peanut Corp. salmonella outbreak has already led to new federal food safety regulations. It's a big reason why Americans should feel safer about tainted food being pulled off grocery shelves more quickly, like the salmonella contaminated nut butters that were recalled this week.

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Parnell and his younger brother Michael Parnell

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Stewart Parnell also faces obstruction of justice charges, as does former plant quality assurance manager Mary Wilkerson, who sat with her attorney next to Michael Parnell.

The government says the Parnell brothers and Wilkerson put profit before safety. They knew about the salmonella in their products, prosecutors say, and covered up lab results that tested positive for the bacteria.

In all, nine people died nationwide; another 714 people in 46 states were sickened, some critically. It was the deadliest outbreak of its kind in recent years.

The prosecution's blistering opening statement contained three now-infamous words Parnell penned in a March 2007 email to a plant manager about contaminated products: "Just ship it."

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Salmonella is America's most common cause of food-borne illness and sickens up to 1.4 million people each year. The key to destroying it is to wash raw foods thoroughly or cook other foods at high enough temperatures to kill the bacteria. In the case of raw peanuts, salmonella is destroyed by roasting at 350 degrees.

Once ingested, salmonella can take many days to manifest in a person's body. Most people are able to fight it off, but it can turn into a killer, especially in those who are vulnerable: the very young, the old and the frail. That was the case with Shirley Almer.

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Longtime employees told reporters they wilted under the pressure to produce for Stewart Parnell. The Lynchburg, Virginia, man, they said, bought the plant in 2001 in order to profit from an iconic industry; Georgia is the nation's top peanut producer.

Employees described a filthy facility where Parnell increased production manifold and enticed food giants like Kellogg Co. and Sara Lee to buy from Peanut Corp.

Annual sales jumped 66%, from $15 million in 2005 to $25 million in 2008, the last full year Peanut Corp. was in production, according to business researchers Dun & Bradstreet.

Federal inspectors found roaches, rats, mold, dirt, bird droppings and accumulated grease in the plant when they raided it in January 2009. They also found a leaky roof.

Salmonella thrives in the intestines of birds. And the presence of water in what is supposed to be a dry processing facility for peanuts is like adding gasoline to fire for salmonella, say food safety experts. Inspectors also found that the peanut roasting temperatures were not always hot enough to kill salmonella.

Health officials discovered similarly poor conditions at Peanut Corp.'s other plant in Plainview, Texas, and both facilities were shuttered. The company later filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

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The Food and Drug Administration estimates that every year, 48 million people -- one out of six -- suffer from food-borne illnesses. More than 100,000 people are hospitalized and about 3,000 die from infections the federal government says are largely preventable.

Yet food companies are still not required to test their products for safety.

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Recalls of tainted products used to be voluntary, like the one this week announced by nSpired Natural Foods Inc.

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But in early 2011, as a result of the campaign launched in the aftermath of the Peanut Corp. tragedy, President Barack Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act, which the FDA calls the most sweeping reform in food safety laws in 70 years.

For the first time, the law took aim at preventing food-borne illnesses rather than just responding to contamination that had already occurred. The new law gave the FDA the power to suspend a facility's ability to sell food in American markets and detain food that may be contaminated.

The problem, say food safety advocates, is there is not yet adequate funding for the FDA to fully enforce the law. The FDA declined to comment.


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