Posted August 8, 2014
Georgia
peanut plant officials waited five days to disclose lab tests positive for
salmonella, despite repeated questioning from on-site inspectors rushing to
find the source of a deadly national outbreak, according to a Yahoo article by
the Associated Press available here.
Seattle Times also published the AP article available here,
and Food and Safety News published an article here.
In January
2009, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspectors visited the Peanut Corp. of
America plant in Blakely, Georgia after salmonella-tainted peanut butter was
traced to the factory.
Bob
Neligan, an FDA food safety investigator, told the jury that the plant manager
informed inspectors on the first day that the only time salmonella had been
detected during routine lab tests on the company's products was actually a
false positive. The same manager, Samuel Lightsey, changed his story a few days
later, he said.
"It
was finally on day five that Mr. Lightsey revealed they had had three positives
for salmonella, and that would have been in the last year or so," Neligan
said. "We had continuously asked that from day one."
The FDA
inspection resulted in the shut down of the plant and bankruptcy of Peanut
Corp. The salmonella outbreak of 2008-2009 prompted one of the largest food
recalls in U.S. history. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discovered
that 714 people in 46 states were infected and nine people died.
Lightsey
suggested that Stewart Parnell and Mary Wilkerson knew more because they had
been working at PCA for a longer time period. Former chief executive Stewart
Parnell, his peanut broker brother Michael Parnell, and Mary Wilkerson, the
quality control manager at the Blakely plant stand trial for felony charges
involving fraud and conspiracy, according to Food and
Safety News.
Originally
charged with the other three defendants, Lightsey reached a plea agreement with
the government last May. In it, he agreed to plead guilty to seven felony
counts in exchange for having his potential jail time capped at six years.
Lightsey
pleaded guilty to: 1) conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud; 2) conspiracy
to introduce adulterated and misbranded food into interstate commerce with
intent to defraud; 3) introduction of adulterated food into interstate commerce
with intent to defraud; 4) introduction of misbranded food into interstate
commerce with the intent to defraud; 5) interstate shipments fraud; 6) wire
fraud, and 7) obstruction of justice.
The trial
began in southwest Georgia a week ago and is expected to take eight weeks to
present, according to Yahoo.
For more
information on food safety, please visit the National Agricultural Law Center’s
website here.
