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.
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