Subscription Center
Feb 11, 2009 05:10 PM | 4
Top brass at Peanut Corp. of America (PCA), whose contaminated peanut products are blamed for sickening 600 people and possibly killing eight others since September, refused to testify today at a congressional hearing. The company closed a second plant, this one in Plainview, Tex., yesterday after tests confirmed it also was contaminated with salmonella.
PCA President Stewart Parnell and Sammy Lightsey, manager of PCA's Blakely, Ga., plant, invoked their constitutional right to remain silent (to avoid providing information that might be self-incriminating evidence of illegal action) during a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on the salmonella outbreak. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the company knowingly shipped contaminated products from the Blakely plant, which was shuttered after the feds traced the salmonella outbreak in 44 states to peanut butter, paste and other ingredients made there.
California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman released internal PCA e-mails today showing that Parnell was worried about the economic loss of delaying shipments of products. "The time lapse … is costing us huge $$$$," he wrote in an e-mail to Lightsey dated October 6, 2008. In another e-mail sent last month to the FDA after PCA had begun recalling products, Parnell pleaded: "We … desperately at least need to turn the raw peanuts on our floor into money."
What these emails show, Waxman said, "is this company cared more about its financial bottom line than about the safety of customers."
The FDA and FBI have launched a criminal investigation into PCA. We've got a guide to the salmonella outbreak with the lowdown on how the bacteria gets into peanut butter and our previous coverage of the scandal. Click here for the full FDA list of recalled products.
Image by Dano via Flickr
Tags:
peanut,
salmonella
More News Blog:
Next: Space crash: Commercial and Russian satellites collide in orbit
Previous: An Australian city named for Darwin is already celebrating his birthday
See what we're tweeting about
gmusser "Some curves are so convoluted they wriggle free of the one-dimensional world and fill up space." Awesome math story. http://t.co/1HymznWXG1
Horganism Discover the Secret of the 17-Year Cicada, But It Won’t Get You Tenure. Great essay from an old friend. http://t.co/Z4VAsut3eM via @sciam
fredguterl The science of Cicadas (no recipes) : http://t.co/80V7phC1gu via @ChristiansenJen
Deadline: Jun 29 2013
Reward: $7,000 USD
The Seeker for this Challenge desires proposals for chemical methods that could rapidly degrade a dilute aqueous solution
Deadline: Aug 31 2013
Reward: $100,000 USD
The Geoffrey Beene Foundation Alzheimer’s Initiative (GBFAI) is launching the 2013 Geoffrey Beene Global NeuroDiscovery Challenge whose
Powered By: 
YES! Send me a free issue of Scientific American with no obligation to continue the subscription. If I like it, I will be billed for the one-year subscription.
4 Comments
Add CommentThey need to have the FDA inspector(s) testify also.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey need to have the FDA inspector(s) testify also. What inspections were done over the past few years? What is on their official inspection reports?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswhat about solmonella contaminating peanuts itself. Is there shelf life for peanuts? A research question...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think you should have included a picture of a peanut butter sandwich to accompany the article. Rather, you should have pictured the shameful Mr. Stewart Parnell. In this case the person, not the product is the cause of the problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this