Stewart Parnell, president of Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), the company making recent headlines for knowingly selling salmonella-tainted peanut butter to some of the nation’s leading makers of packaged food products, has been called in for a congressional hearing. Congressman Henry Waxman (D-California) made the announcement on January 29.
A history of failed food safety inspections and faulty construction at its Georgia plant are the reasons PCA is being called before congress. The plant’s operations, described by Waxman as “alarming,” have generated a massive recall of food products, made at least 500 Americans sick with food poisoning symptoms that include bloody diarrhea, and has led to the deaths of eight people.
Along with Parnell, the first public hearing on the salmonella outbreak will include testimony from representatives of two of the laboratories PCA has used for testing its finished product. One practice leading to the food recall is discovery that products that tested positive for salmonella infection were not destroyed, as required by law, but were retested, sometimes repeatedly, until a negative test result could be achieved. Once testing negative for the presence of salmonella, the products were shipped to food manufacturers nationwide.
Hundreds of items routinely found on supermarket shelves everywhere have been recalled as have frozen cookie doughs sold during fundraising campaigns by school children and peanut-based products in supply at a US military base in Germany.
