Why we have government

There is a strain of civic political philosophy that the less the government gets involved in things, the better off we are.  We can have honest debates about how much government we need; as long as we start with an honest acknowledgment government is necessary to protect us. A recent news story gives us an example of a situation where government involvement can be beneficial.

Peanuts are big business in Georgia.  At over $1 billion in annual revenues, right behind cotton as our number 2 cash crop.  Almost half of the nation’s peanuts are produced in Georgia. 

Between 2006 and 2008, two of the larger peanut processors in Georgia were having problems with their product.  Salmonella contamination turned up in peanut paste produced at plants owned and operated in Georgia by ConAgra and Peanut Corporation of America (PCA).  Many people became ill and some died from the tainted food dumped in our food supply.

Both companies were charged with crimes.  ConAgra, smartly, worked out a deal with the Government.  It pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and paid a fine of more than $11 million.  No one went to prison to answer for these crimes.

The same was not true with PCA.  Stewart Parnell was the owner and operator of PCA, a Virginia based company.  PCA moved into Georgia when it bought a processing plant in Blakey, Georgia in 2001.  Conditions at the Blakely plant were deplorable, containers covered in rat dung and dust.  Internal testing revealed the presence of salmonella in products that were  sent to customers by PCA between 2004 and 2006.  PCA’s customers were not notified of the findings in PCA’s peanut paste; they never saw the filth in which it was processed.

On October 5, 2006, Parnell received an email from a PCA customer who had found salmonella in products shipped to it.  Parnell responded with feigned indignation.  He claimed that he had been in the business for 26 years and ran an unimpeachable business.  Six weeks later, his brother, Michael Parnell (a food broker for PCA) suggested that a false certificate of analysis could be created to refute the customer’s claims. 

Over the next two (2) years, this pattern was repeated: deny; obfuscate; and try to manipulate the testing process to have a colorable claim of ignorance.  In September of 2008, PCA knowingly shipped tainted products because the customer did not require a certificate of analysis.  Four (4) days later, the first victim of PCA’s trail of dark deeds succumbed to salmonella poisoning.  All the while, PCA had also been putting out false certificates of analysis for its products.

In November of 2008, the CDC was documenting two (2) large multi-state outbreaks of salmonella.  Eventually, the CDC found that PCA peanut butter was the cause of the outbreak.  It found 20 instances where PCA injected tainted product into the food stream.  If you remember, things were so serious that all peanut butter product nationwide had to be recalled, as people were dying from salmonella.  Eventually, the CDC concluded at least 714 people had their illness traced to PCA tainted peanut butter, 9 of these people died.

PCA quickly moved to protect itself by filing for liquidation bankruptcy protection.  This insulated it from lawsuits by the victims and their families, except for a measly $12 million insurance policy.

On February 11, 2013, the Daniel Kilgore, PCA’s Plant Manager, pleaded guilty to 24 crimes.  The very next day, the Government secured a 76-count indictment against PCA officials, including Parnell, as the CEO.  In a rare show of force, officials were charged with the misdeeds of the company. 

Parnell elected to go to trial, denying that he had done anything wrong in causing all of this misery.  At trial, he was convicted of over 70 criminal charges ranging from conspiracy to knowingly shipping tainted food across state lines to obstruction of justice and wire fraud.  At his sentencing hearing, family and friends lined up to talk about what a good man he was, in trying to dissuade U.S. District Court Judge Louis Sands from sentencing Parnell to the Life sentence sought by the Government.  In the end, the sentencing hearing was pyrrhic as the 28-year sentence handed down by Judge Sands is, in effect, a life sentence for Parnell.

Parnell knew what was going on within PCA.  He chose to put his profits over the promise of safety owed to all of us.  Thankfully, the CDC and U.S. Attorney’s Office were there to make him pay for his crimes.  Soulless creatures like Parnell populate our commercial system and we need a vigilant government to protect us from their evil.