Would You Buy a Snack from this Man

[Bob Nattering]

Meet the owner of Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), Stewart Parnell, who took the 5th before a Congressional hearing yesterday on the Salmonella outbreak:

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ABC's Lynchburg/Washington Affiliate Channel 13 (http://www.wset.com/news/stories/0209/594098.html) reports Parnell's internal emails that were recently released:

Lynchburg, VA and Washington, DC - The Lynchburg man at the center of the nationwide salmonella outbreak appeared before Congress Wednesday. One thing seems perfectly clear— he did know the bacteria was in his products. The owner of Lynchburg-based Peanut Corporation of America might be done-in by his own words, but it won't be because of anything he said in Washington Wednesday.
Stewart Parnell refused to speak to Congress. However, his emails say plenty. We spoke with Parnell on more than one occasion recently and he has told us the media has misrepresented his situation. That may be true to some extent, but it's hard to misrepresent this: emails released confirming he was aware of positive tests for salmonella.
One email from June 2008 was in response to an employee who warned of a positive test for salmonella in a company product. Parnell's email read "I go thru this about once a week... I will hold my breath...... again." In an October email to the manager of his Georgia plant, Parnell writes that positive salmonella tests are -quote- "costing us huge $$$$." On January 12th, after more than 12 tests had shown salmonella contamination, Parnell emailed employees, saying: "We have never found any salmonella at all." Before Congress Wednesday Parnell had just one thing to say.

"Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, on the advice of my counsel, I respectfully decline to answer your questions, based on the protection afforded me under the United States Constitution."


The FDA's Recall list (http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/peanutbutterrecall/PeanutButterProducts2009.pdf) is now in excess of 2000 items. These items are all linked to PCA's Georgia plant. The number of items may be about to grow even larger, due to the discovery of salmonella in PCA's Plainview Texas plant.

[Sandra]

He looks a little worried, doesn't he?

[Bob Nattering]

He looks a little worried, doesn't he?

The picture might have been snapped after Congressman Walden invited him to eat from a container of recalled peanut butter products.
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Only comment I can think of is:

The Keystone Kops grilling Lou Costello, with Bud Abbot as Lou's Lawyer . .

When the bad peanut butter is all thrown out, and replaced with new on the store shelves, outside of a couple of tort lawyers becoming rich, who benefitted?

Nothing much will change because while we may write law to keep mouse turds out of your peanut butter, there is no one to look and see if that's actually the case.

Re: SEC and the Bernie Madoff hearings in the House. The SEC people testified (unwittingly, it seemed) to not knowing, or having time or accss to Madoff's scheme, even after being notified or warned several times. It appeared that they were (and are) totally overwhelmed by the enormity and lack of total understanding of what they were enforcing. Kinda the same deal during the Enron hearings about "Derivitives" . . They were totally in the dark on that one . . .

As far as the mouse turds, think of it as "used protein", or don't think about it at all . . .

[Loren Swelk]

After reading and participating in the Forum since the beginning I do not believe I have read the words "mouse turds" and "used protein" in the same sentence before. I don't think I will be having a PB,MT&J sandwich any time soon.

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Is it the idea of what you have eaten . . . or . . .

What you have YET to eat . .

That bothers you?

Heheheheheheh . . .

Kinda like the old axiom about making sausage . . "You don't want to be there when it happens . . . and you don't EVEN want to know what went into it!"

[Bob Nattering]

He looks a little worried, doesn't he?

After reading and participating in the Forum since the beginning I do not believe I have read the words "mouse turds" and "used protein" in the same sentence before. I don't think I will be having a PB,MT&J sandwich any time soon.

My point of view: If the protein in my PB comes from mouse turds, let it be in one sentence but not in one month.

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Has any of you ever been to a peanut processing plant? Like in Clovis, NM or Plainview, or Lubbock, Texas? They gots piles and piles of Raw Peanuts outside . . . and piles and piles of roasted and salted in the shell inside, and then they got piles of shelled peanuts, of several kinds, in big bins . .

And . . They have all kinds of critters that like peanuts, trying to get to them . .

But, basically Peanuts are no different than shelled corn, or wheat, or barley . . or . . . They're just a little "fatter", which will support more bacteria, longer . . .

Heh, heh, NOBODY ever thinks about the processed food they buy and consume, simply because Somebody else told us that it was SAFE . . .

Who guaranteed that? George Dubya Bush? Barack Obama? Someone else? Back to those people watching out for the likes of Bernie Madoff. Bernie was a large pinhead in a great big box of pins . . so was the peanut factory in Georgia . .

[loose cannon]

This thread brings to mind the Upton Sinclair novel " The Jungle" -- a muckraking expose of the meat packing business in Chicago which led to much of the regulation of the meat packing industry, pure food & drug acts etc. Sinclair an old world Socialist would have fit in really well in this current era with the rebirth of biased yellow journalism and reporters ferreting out miscreants to bring forth to bash as examples of unprincipled capitalism run amok. It will not be long before public stockades will be in every square and we will have the local businesses leader in shackles and branded with a scarlet letter.

[Henryk]

He looks a little worried, doesn't he?
It is murder, people died while eating his product which he knew was tainted and he said, I will hold my breath? He will hold much more very soon. No excuse for killing people.

[Sandra]

He should be sentenced to eating his own product! And lots of it!

I agree with the murder assessment, but was he the one who said, "ship it anyway"? Or was that someone under him? Either way he has a responsibility, but if it was someone under him, they need to be held accountable.

And this not to mention the billions of dollars in losses to other companies who had to recall the product, there's quite a loss there, too.

[Bob Nattering]

He should be sentenced to eating his own product! And lots of it!

I agree with the murder assessment, but was he the one who said, "ship it anyway"? Or was that someone under him? Either way he has a responsibility, but if it was someone under him, they need to be held accountable.

And this not to mention the billions of dollars in losses to other companies who had to recall the product, there's quite a loss there, too.

Actually, from what I heard on the news yesterday, the biggest $ losses are to the much bigger companies that make their own peanut butter products and have had no recalls. They have apparently lost about 25% in sales due to the public fear of the products.

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The "Intelligent" Public who lives on 8 minute segments of TV's Talking Heads, heard the Words "PEANUT BUTTER-Bad" and decided not to eat anything that MIGHT contain Peanut Butter or be flavored to taste like Peanut Butter.

And TV's Talking heads, if their IQ's were collected, mixed together in a bucket and converted into water, couldn't wet a 12" X 12" Floor tile uniformly, and are currently trying to diagnose the cause of an Airliner crash in New York, killing 49-50 people, depending upon who's speaking.

While they may attempt to more than likely miss the whole diagnosis, in about a year, after a thorough Investigation, the NTSB will release the believed cause, with no Talking Heads either quoted or mentioned.

Basically, the Aircraft ceased to support itself in flight (stalled for perhaps unknown reasons) and although very early in the scheduled flight, made a mandatory landing, with negative results. (Based upon the information at hand)

Back to our program about bad peanut butter and mouse turds . .

[Bob Nattering]

Back to our program about bad peanut butter and mouse turds . .

Here's my take on the problem:

All turds in the product when it enters the roaster will become roasted salmonella-free turds. However, unroasted turds entering into the product post-roast are potentially unroasted salmonella turds causing salmonella-turd peanut butter. Also birds on a leaky roof are a potential problem leading to bird-turd-tea entering the building. If the bird-turd-tea leaks onto the product post-roast, that could create a problem with unroasted salmonella bird-turd-tea peanut butter.

[Sandra]

SOMEDAY I'm going to learn NOT to read mens' posts on this forum AT LUNCHTIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:P

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That would be . . unroasted salmonella bird-turd-tea post-roasted peanut butter with other roasted and un-roasted additives.

Good job, Bob!

[Bob Nattering]

Surprise, surprise! Peanut Corp of America (PCA) files for Chapter 7

AP News Story (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090214/ap_on_bi_ge/salmonella_outbreak_bankruptcy;_ylt=AppgNcMaManjTI n.LdzdWGSs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFoYzF0M3NyBHBvcwMxNQRzZW MDYWNjb3JkaW9uX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNwZWFudXRjb3Jw b2Y-)

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A normal Business response . . shelter from the lawsuits to follow . .

Look what happened, 30 or so years ago when the tort lawyers went after Johns-Manville and other building supply manufacturers who had used asbestos as a building material until they were both told it was a carcinogen and that they were liable although they knew less than nothing about those particular claims . . Or Seagrams for "Creating Drunks". .

And you have to know what's coming next . . Lawsuits a'plenty!

[Dean.Barnett]

Surprise, surprise! Peanut Corp of America (PCA) files for Chapter 7

AP News Story (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090214/ap_on_bi_ge/salmonella_outbreak_bankruptcy;_ylt=AppgNcMaManjTI n.LdzdWGSs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFoYzF0M3NyBHBvcwMxNQRzZW MDYWNjb3JkaW9uX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNwZWFudXRjb3Jw b2Y-)The owner's troubles are mounting (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/14/AR2009021401758.html?wpisrc=newsletter):
Today, Parnell's peanut empire has filed for bankruptcy protection. He is the target of a federal criminal investigation, civil claims are piling up in courthouses around the country and he has been vilified from Georgia peanut fields to Capitol Hill.

He is accused by federal investigators of intentionally sending into the stream of commerce peanut products contaminated with salmonella bacteria. The government has directly linked Parnell's peanuts to nine deaths and 637 cases of salmonella illness in 44 states and Canada, with thousands more illnesses suspected.
But at least they weren't Chinese peanuts (http://in.reuters.com/article/asiaCompanyAndMarkets/idINPEK3755920090213):
BEIJING, Feb 13 (Reuters) - The assets of the dairy company at the centre of China's melamine-tainted milk scandal that killed six children will go up for auction early next month, the official news agency Xinhua said on Friday.

The auction comes after Tian Wenhua, the former chairwoman of the Sanlu Group, was sentenced to life last month and fined $3.6 million for her role in the scandal.

Sanlu had borrowed $132 million to pay medical fees for the 300,000 children that fell ill last year after they drank milk laced with melamine, a toxic industrial compound, adding to its debt burden, said Xinhua.

Earlier this month, Sanlu's Tian appealed her life sentence saying her trial lacked evidence.

Tian was convicted last year at Shijiazhuang Intermediate People's Court of manufacturing and selling fake or substandard products.

Two men were sentenced to death and three former Sanlu executives received jail terms of five to 15 years.