Felony Prosecution For Salmonella-Peanut Executives

Felony Prosecution For Salmonella-Peanut Executives

www.wired.com

A pretty extraordinary thing happened Thursday, here in Georgia: A district court in the middle part of the state unsealed a 76-count, 52-page indictment of former officials of the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), charging them with fraud and conspiracy for knowingly distributing peanut products contaminated with Salmonella.

(visit the link for the full news article)

The executives’ apparent attitude toward their customers is pretty much summed up by emails quoted in the indictment, sent by former PCA president Stewart Parnell, the first person named on the indictment:

(Count 2) 16. On or about March 21, 2007, upon being told that salmonella testing results weer not yet available and that shipment of a portion of a customer’s product would therefore be delayed, Stewart Parnell stated, via email: “Sh*t, just ship it. I cannot afford to loose (sic) another customer.”

28. On or about August 16, 2007, in discussing the possibility of PCA obtaining its own laboratory testing equipment, Stewart Parnell, via email, stated…: “These lab tests and (certificates of analysis) are f*cking breaking me/us.”

35. On or about February 4, 2008, after referring to 1,374 pounds of peanut products left over from production as “waste,” Stewart Parnell did state, via email to PCA employees…: “IT IS MONEY… IT IS MONEY… IT IS MONEY… IT IS GODDAMN MONEY THAT WE DO NOT HAVE BECAUSE OF HOW LONG I HAVE ALLOWED you, your crew and everyone down there to let THIS GO ON… STOP THE MONEY FROM EVER GETTING OUT OF THE PRODUCTION FLOW!!!!!!!!!!”

Nothing like a fresh corporate scandal to start the day, eh? I'll bet these guys are looking at some hard time in a minimum security resort.

www.wired.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I fail to see the difference between what these people have done, and deliberate contamination of a staple food source for terroristic purposes. If fellows with a religious/radical motive had put anthrax in the nuts, they would have been accused of terrorism, banged up in some Christ forsaken dump in the middle of no where, and never seen again.

The motivation for this crime was greed and greed alone, and I think on some level that is in fact WORSE!

reply to post by TrueBrit


My guess is that's why they are being prosecuted and rightfully so. Add to that list the compounding pharmacy up in Massachusetts that allowed it's customers to be injected with tainted spinal injections, or (insert other ruthlessly greedy morons here)

Hopefully this is a trend.. A check and balance as it were.

reply to post by SilentKoala

Yah, nuts. Thats bad for sure. Cant have bad, evil nuts. Good job government.

What about when Bayer knowingly distributed HIV infected blood. Hmmm...

Those nuts guys need a bigger lobby.

Originally posted by gladtobehere
reply to post by SilentKoala

 

Yah, nuts. Thats bad for sure. Cant have bad, evil nuts. Good job government.

What about when Bayer knowingly distributed HIV infected blood. Hmmm...

Those nuts guys need a bigger lobby.

Indeed. You pay your "protection" money or you take the consequences. Obviously the guy was too cheap to get the checks out without complaint, and did himself in....

This is why food produced in factories, including meat, is a problem. The leadership is concerned about profitability at the expense of everything else, including safety and the health/well-being of the end user. In fact, the end user is only considered as a factor to be manipulated for more profit. This attitude is pervasive in the food industry.

Contamination in the food supply is the result of mass agriculture--the processes involved in growing and distributing food on a massive scale. You can point fingers at this company or that, these people or those, and punish them accordingly, but it will never change anything. Society demands that other people grow and distribute their own food for them, destroying entire ecosystems and tainting their "products" in the process of doing so.

Well... what did you think was going to happen? You clear entire forests to cultivate one crop (let's say... peanuts), and then wonder why every insect on the planet that likes peanuts seems to be concentrated in the same area. And then all the rodents that like the insects and the peanuts move in and saturate the area with feces (which would be fine if it were given time to break down into the soil naturally, but it isn't). Then the peanuts are picked and, again, stored under conditions that are ripe for bacterial, fungal, and viral contamination. Etc., etc.

I won't even get into the energy resources extracted and expended so that everyone can have said coveted peanuts. Suffice it to say that, if you're looking for someone (or some company) to blame when people get sick, you're barking up the wrong tree. The entire production and distribution system makes these instances inevitable, and with increasing regularity. When it really comes down to it, the only way to know your food is safe is to abandon the conventional system entirely and either grow/raise your own or, at the very least, stick to locally produced and distributed sources.

All this witch hunt does is give the do-gooders an ego boost.

Great news. It is strange that the insurance the company had paid claims to companies they sold the nuts to to utilize in their products. This insurance paid for company losses for their products that needed to be recalled. Very few if any people that got sick from the nuts got a cent from this. The government imposed a fine to cover their losses of Medicare and were satisfied. I am glad that these people are getting prosecuted for their greed and hope they suffer a long time in jail. If you drank coffee or ate a variety of root veggies that contained caffeic acid, it may have neutralized the toxin created from the Asparagillus microbes. Nuts contain caffeic acid but the levels were probably used up by the amount of the Asparagillus present. Heat kills the fungus but does not neutralize the toxin.

reply to post by gladtobehere


Interesting, seems like the FDA doesn't care about people in the other countries in the world. I thought these were allies of ours. I guess the Pharma Execs are above the law. Why didn't our allies take legal action against these big corporations, I suppose the people involved were deemed as drags on their society so didn't care. Maybe the payoffs to the high officials of those countries was adequate to keep quiet.

35. On or about February 4, 2008, after referring to 1,374 pounds of peanut products left over from production as “waste,” Stewart Parnell did state, via email to PCA employees…: “IT IS MONEY… IT IS MONEY… IT IS MONEY… IT IS GODDAMN MONEY THAT WE DO NOT HAVE BECAUSE OF HOW LONG I HAVE ALLOWED you, your crew and everyone down there to let THIS GO ON… STOP THE MONEY FROM EVER GETTING OUT OF THE PRODUCTION FLOW!!!!!!!!!!”

Salmonella-Peanuts, the product of capitalism.

Originally posted by WaterBottle

35. On or about February 4, 2008, after referring to 1,374 pounds of peanut products left over from production as “waste,” Stewart Parnell did state, via email to PCA employees…: “IT IS MONEY… IT IS MONEY… IT IS MONEY… IT IS GODDAMN MONEY THAT WE DO NOT HAVE BECAUSE OF HOW LONG I HAVE ALLOWED you, your crew and everyone down there to let THIS GO ON… STOP THE MONEY FROM EVER GETTING OUT OF THE PRODUCTION FLOW!!!!!!!!!!”

Salmonella-Peanuts, the product of capitalism.

lol is it just me or does that guy sound like a totally crazed psychopath? It's like he's in some sort of money-induced trance and he can't see anything else beyond his relentless desire for money. This is the type of people who control our business world, psychopathic money fueled idiots.

reply to post by SilentKoala


Corps are required to make profits for their investors at any cost. i am not sure why you people are surprised

Originally posted by votan
reply to post by SilentKoala

 

Corps are required to make profits for their investors at any cost. i am not sure why you people are surprised

Legally they're only required to do everything they can to try and increase share prices. Those are tied to growth more than profitability.

I'm in Georgia, I remember when all that was going on. Georgia has a huge problem, as the rest of the country right now with the man cutting any corner for profit. This is what happens when you take those cuts from the bottom, instead of the top.

What's disturbing is that they know that lots of kids will be eating this. They should have to eat a whole jar of contaminated peanut butter as part of punishment. What if someone knowingly gave one of their kids something contaminated? Oh, that'd be a different story, huh. This is evil, greedy men right here. Feed them that yummy peanut butter by spoon.