A Peanut Company Shipped Products It Knew Tested Positive for Salmonella. Nine People Died, and Its Owner Got 28 Years.

Between September 2008 and April 2009, a strain of Salmonella Typhimurium traced to peanut butter and peanut paste made by the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) sickened 714 confirmed people across 46 states, hospitalized 166 of them, and killed nine, according to the CDC. Internal test records later shown in federal court proved the company's own lab work had flagged salmonella in its products at least a dozen times in 2007 and 2008 — and the company shipped the product anyway.

The Blakely, Georgia plant that made it hadn't been inspected by the FDA itself since 2001. When federal inspectors finally walked the floor again, in January 2009, they found live roaches, mold, and a leaking roof. By the time the recall was over, it was the largest in U.S. food history to that point: more than 3,900 products pulled from over 200 companies. It ended with PCA's owner, Stewart Parnell, sentenced to 28 years in federal prison — the longest sentence ever handed down in the United States for a food-safety case.

Just Ship It

On or about March 21, 2007, a PCA plant manager told Stewart Parnell that a customer's order would have to wait — salmonella test results on the batch hadn't come back yet. Parnell's reply, presented as evidence at his 2014 trial: "Just ship it. I can't afford to lose another customer."

The email became one of the defining pieces of evidence in the government's case, cited by multiple outlets that covered the trial, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's day-by-day reporting on the emails read into the record.

Turn Them Loose

In August 2008, a batch of peanut products tested positive for salmonella. Rather than destroy it, PCA sent a sample out to a different, private lab for a second opinion. That test came back negative. Parnell's response, also entered into the trial record: "Okay, let's turn them loose then."

Congressional testimony and internal emails reviewed by FDA investigators showed this was not an isolated call. The Blakely plant's own testing had detected salmonella in finished product at least 12 separate times across 2007 and 2008; in each case, the product was retested by an outside lab rather than destroyed, and shipped once a clean result came back.

A Plant the FDA Hadn't Seen Since 2001

The FDA had not conducted its own inspection of the Blakely facility since 2001. In the years between, the agency contracted the work out to the Georgia Department of Agriculture, whose inspectors visited the plant nine times between 2006 and 2008 and reported only minor issues.

When the FDA returned in January 2009 — after the outbreak was already traced to the plant — its inspectors documented live and dead roaches in the wash room, mold, a leaking roof, and roughly ten separate sanitation problem areas, according to the agency's own inspection report (FDA Form 483) and contemporaneous reporting.

The Outbreak, by the Numbers

• CDC's case definition covered laboratory-confirmed Salmonella Typhimurium infections matching the outbreak strain from September 1, 2008, to April 20, 2009.
• CDC's PulseNet surveillance system first flagged the cluster on November 10, 2008, after 13 matching isolates turned up across 12 states.
• 714 people in 46 states were confirmed ill; 166 (23%) were hospitalized; 9 (1%) died, per the CDC and a peer-reviewed account published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
• The nine deaths were reported across five states: Idaho, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.

The Recall

• Between January 10 and April 29, 2009, 3,913 peanut-butter-containing products were recalled — a total that at the time made it the largest food recall in U.S. history.
• The recall drew in more than 200 companies that had bought PCA peanut paste, peanut meal, or peanut butter as an ingredient, since PCA sold almost exclusively to other manufacturers rather than directly to consumers.
• Recalled finished products spanned crackers, cookies, ice cream, energy bars, trail mix, and pet biscuits.
• PCA ceased operations and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on February 13, 2009, roughly a month after the outbreak was traced to its plant.

The Sentence

A federal grand jury indicted Stewart Parnell on 76 felony counts; the case went to trial on 71 of them. On September 19, 2014, after a 34-day trial, a jury convicted him on all 71 — conspiracy, mail and wire fraud, obstruction of justice, and introducing adulterated and misbranded food into interstate commerce. His brother and food broker, Michael Parnell, was convicted on 29 counts; the plant's quality assurance manager, Mary Wilkerson, on one count of obstruction of justice.

On September 21, 2015, Stewart Parnell was sentenced to 28 years in prison, the harshest penalty ever imposed on a corporate executive in a U.S. food-poisoning case, according to the Department of Justice. Michael Parnell received 20 years; Wilkerson received 5. Appeals stretched on for years — the Eleventh Circuit denied Stewart Parnell's final habeas petition in 2025, leaving both brothers still in federal custody, with Stewart Parnell's projected release listed as 2038.

The gap between the two emails says most of what needs saying: in 2007, when Parnell didn't yet have a test result, he ordered the product shipped anyway. In 2008, when he did have a test result — a positive one — he waited only long enough for a different lab to hand him a better answer.

Filed from public reporting:

• CDC — Multistate Outbreak of Salmonella Typhimurium Infections Linked to Peanut Butter, 2008–2009
• New England Journal of Medicine — Salmonella Typhimurium Infections Associated with Peanut Products
• FDA — Peanut Corporation of America, Form FDA 483 (Inspectional Observations, January 2009)
• Department of Justice — Former Peanut Company President Receives Largest Criminal Sentence in Food Safety Case
• Associated Press (via Inc.) — Former Peanut Exec Gets 28 Years in Prison for Outbreak
• Food Safety News — Six Years of Appeals Ends With the Parnell Brothers Still in Federal Prison
• Food Safety Magazine — Could Stewart Parnell Be Set Free?
• NBC News — FDA Finds Multiple Problems at Peanut Plant
• NBC News — Salmonella Found at Ga. Plant as Early as 2006
• FoodNavigator — Internal Emails Revealed as PCA President Refuses to Testify
• WTVR (CBS 6) — Peanut Company Owner Who Emailed 'Just Ship It' Found Guilty in Deadly Salmonella Outbreak
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — CEO Emails Tell the Tale in Peanut Poisoning Trial