WASHINGTON — A congressional subcommittee investigating a recent salmonella outbreak released e-mails Wednesday revealing that the owner of a peanut company discounted warnings that nuts were infected with the deadly bacteria.
"This lot is presumptive SALMONELLA!!!!" wrote plant worker Mary Wilkerson last June 6 to company officials. That same day, Stewart Parnell, owner and president of Peanut Corp. of America, replied, "thanks Mary, I go thru this about once a week...I will hold my breath.........again..." The e-mails were released on the same day that the House energy and commerce subcommittee announced that a ninth death, that of an elderly Ohio woman, had been tied to the salmonella outbreak. The panel also heard testimony from family members of people killed or sickened in the outbreak.
"Cancer couldn't kill her, but peanut butter did," Jeffrey Almer said of his 72-year-old mother, who died in December.
Almer told the subcommittee that his mother, Shirley, ate tainted peanut butter in a Minnesota rehabilitation center where she was being treated for a urinary tract infection. The day before she was to return home, he said, doctors unexpectedly said his mother had only hours to live.
The Food and Drug Administration last month traced the source of the outbreak, which has sickened 600 people nationwide, to the company's Blakely, Ga., plant. The agency found that Peanut Corp. knowingly shipped peanuts, peanut butter and peanut paste products to dozens of food makers even after lab tests detected salmonella at the now-closed plant.
Parnell, the Peanut Corp. owner, refused to answer the subcommittee's questions Wednesday, repeatedly invoking his 5th Amendment rights.
Internal company e-mails obtained by the subcommittee show the company's president was alerted on numerous occasions to the fact that batches of the company's products were infected with salmonella. Yet according to Parnell's e-mail responses, he instructed staff to "turn the product loose."
At the hearing, Parnell said: "Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, on advice of my counsel, I respectfully decline to answer your questions based on the protections afforded me under the U.S. Constitution."
Peanut Corp. plant manager Sammy Lightsey also invoked his right not to testify.
Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) held up a gallon bucket wrapped in yellow crime scene tape and presumably containing a recalled peanut butter product, and asked Parnell if he would be willing to "take the lid off" and eat any of it.
