A Peanut Executive Is Going to Prison for Knowingly Exposing Customers to Salmonella

On Monday, a Georgia judge sentenced former Stewart Parnell, the former owner of the Peanut Corporation of America, to 28 years in prison for his role in willfully exposing consumers to peanut butter tainted with salmonella back in 2008 and 2009, the Associated Press reports. The ensuing outbreak was blamed for nine deaths and hundreds of illnesses, and led to the biggest food recall in US history.

According to the AP, a federal jury found Parnell guilting of "knowingly shipping contaminated peanut butter and of faking results of lab tests intended to screen for salmonella."

The evidence against Parnell was damning. The AP reports:

Peanut Corporation's quality control manager, Mary Wilkerson, was also convicted in relation to the outbreak, as was Parnell's brother Michael, a former broker, who was sentenced to 20 years for selling contaminated peanut paste to the food giant Kellogg's.

Michael Parnell's attorney argued that his client was actually a victim in the case, claiming that Kellogg's intense production schedule and his brother's tainted factories meant he was "dependent and beholden to his older brother and Kellogg's for his livelihood. However, Michael Parnell was also reported to have told an associate, "We've been shipping to (Kellogg's) with false COAs (false certificates of analysis) since before you got here. I'll handle Kellogg's. Don't worry about it."

The sentence handed down to Stewart Parnell Monday is the harshest punishment ever given to an executive in a food-borne illness case.

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