[BITList] Peanut Butter and Pond Scum

[John Feltham]

Begin forwarded message:



Mr. (Tainted) Peanut Pleads the Fifth

By Dana Milbank
Thursday, February 12, 2009; A03

In another time, Stew Parnell, the man whose peanut butter killed  
eight people and sickened 550 more, would have been put in the stocks  
or the pillory. Congress didn't have such tools at its disposal  
yesterday, so lawmakers did the modern equivalent: They put him  
through the walk of shame.

The House commerce committee hauled Parnell up to testify under  
subpoena, even though lawmakers knew the Peanut Corporation of America  
boss would take the Fifth. Before calling him to the witness table,  
they heard from the grieving relatives of Parnell's victims. They made  
him take the oath, then invited him to sample some of product he  
shipped even though he knew it had tested positive for salmonella.  
Finally, they forced him and his lawyers to take a quarter-mile perp  
walk on Capitol Hill, chased by television cameras and reporters  
jamming microphones in his face and shouting questions:

"Mr. Parnell, did you put profits ahead of the public's health?"

"People died, sir. Do you have anything to say to their families?"

Parnell, limping as he fled on foot, jaywalked across Independence  
Avenue, stealing anxious glances at the pursuing pack of cameras as  
his lawyer urgently worked his cellphone to locate their getaway car.  
The fleeing peanut tycoon had to backtrack when his entourage was  
blocked by a fence on the Capitol grounds, eventually finding their  
Suburban near the U.S. Botanic Garden. Only when the cameras had given  
up the chase did Parnell smile and accept a congratulatory pat on the  
back from a colleague.

Parnell, it would seem, is a man without shame. His company, the FDA  
says, knowingly shipped salmonella-tainted products at least a dozen  
times, endangering the elderly in nursing homes, children in school- 
lunch programs, and everybody who eats Keebler cookies, Clif Bars or  
1,900 other items made with Parnell's bad nuts. Yet Parnell and his  
colleagues couldn't be bothered to attend the first panel during  
yesterday's hearing, when three men spoke of their relatives who had  
died or been sickened by Peanut Corporation's food. Invited to show a  
dollop of remorse, Parnell declined.

"You heard the last panel, did you not?" asked Rep. Bart Stupak (D- 
Mich.), chairman of the commerce subcommittee holding the hearing.

"On advice of my counsel, I respectfully decline to answer your  
question based on the protection afforded me in the United States  
Constitution," Parnell answered in a mechanical Southern drawl.

"I just asked if you heard the other panel," Stupak pointed out.  
Parnell repeated his Fifth Amendment right.

It's not clear that yesterday's hearing will lead to a legislative  
fix; what Parnell's company did, after all, is already against the  
law. But to deter others as brazen as Parnell, a searing public  
censure may be every bit as important as the criminal prosecution he  
probably will face. For once, lawmakers' grandstanding served a useful  
purpose.

Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) held up a plastic container wrapped in  
yellow caution tape. He vowed to ask Parnell to "sample some of the  
products that he didn't think were a problem sending out to the rest  
of us." Walden displayed a poster-sized e-mail from Parnell, who,  
referring to products that had tested positive for salmonella, wrote:  
"Let's turn them loose."

More damning e-mails followed: Parnell's complaint that the positive  
salmonella tests were "costing us huge $$$$$"; his letter to employees  
after many positive salmonella tests saying, "We have never found any  
salmonella at all"; and his plea when the FDA shut down his plant that  
his workers "desperately at least need to turn the raw peanuts on our  
floor into money." Yet another Parnell e-mail -- responding to a  
frantic note from an employee saying "this lot is presumptive on  
SALMONELLA!!!!" -- said: "I go thru this about once a week."

Next in the shaming of Parnell: the victims' families. Jeffrey Almer,  
from Minnesota, placed a photo of his mother on the witness table.  
"Cancer couldn't claim her, but peanut butter did," he said. "PCA now  
has the blood of eight victims on their hands and the shattered health  
of 600 others." Another man, Lou Tousignant, showed a photo montage of  
his father while soft music played. Finally, police officer Peter  
Hurley spoke of his son's salmonella poisoning, while the 3-year-old  
and his sisters squirmed and played in the front row.

"I wonder if Mr. Parnell is in the audience," Walden said. Silence.  
"Is Mr. Parnell in the audience?" More silence. "I would think that  
the least he could have done was to be here to hear your comments, to  
hear about your loved ones," the congressman continued.

Minutes later, the chunky Parnell, his face puffy and his hands  
clasped in front of him, took his place at the table, while the  
victims' families watched from the first row and from the committee  
staff room.

Stupak asked whether he put "food products into interstate commerce  
that you knew to be contaminated with salmonella." Parnell read his  
Fifth Amendment refusal.

"The food poisoning of people -- is that just a cost of doing  
business?" Stupak asked. Parnell, sounding weary, repeated his line.

Walden held up his container. "Would you be willing to take the lid  
off and eat any of these products now, like the people on the panel  
ahead of you, their relatives and loved ones did?"

Parnell took the Fifth on the salmonella snack offer.






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