Senator Presses for PCA Prosecution
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee has written to Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to file criminal charges, if appropriate, against Peanut Corporation of America and its president, Stewart Parnell.
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The now-defunct company sold Salmonella-tainted peanuts and peanut products in late 2008 and early 2009 that caused a massive outbreak of Salmonella Typhimurium that killed nine people and sickened more than 700 others. Sen. Patrick Leahy's letter to the attorney general requested an update on the Department of Justice investigation that began in 2009.
Leahy, of Vermont, said last summer's Salmonella egg outbreak served as a reminder that "there continue to be corporations and individuals that place profitability above public safety.'' When crimes are committed, such wrongdoers must be held fully accountable for their actions, Leahy wrote. Referring to Parnell and the Virginia-based peanut company that Parnell ran, the judiciary chairman wrote that PCA knowingly distributed potentially contaminated peanuts for use in hundreds of different food products even after samples tested positive for Salmonella more than a dozen times in the two years before the outbreak.
"Evidence suggests that PCA also shopped for a laboratory that would provide the acceptable results they were seeking after initial tests found their products to be contaminated. I believe that it is critical for the Department of Justice to determine whether these actions rise to the level of criminal conduct,'' Leahy wrote.
