The CEO of Peanut Corporation of America, Stewart Parnell, has been charged with complicity for an outbreak of salmonella six years ago, which has been traced to the use of infected peanut butter in his company' s plant in Georgia.
In the historic ruling made in a court in Albany, Georgia, on Friday, the jury also found the 54-years old businessman guilty of many other charges including fraud. Legal experts say Parnell could be sentenced to more than 700 years in jail and levelled with a fine of over $17 million.
At least 700 people are reported to have become ill and about 9 others allegedly lost their lives after consuming products containing the contaminated peanut butter. But prosecutors have struggled to directly link the consumption of the company's product to these illnesses and deaths. Nonetheless, they were able to successfully establish that the company's executives knowingly put the tainted product on the market. But defense lawyers argued that Parnell was oblivious to these actions of his employees.
Reports indicate that Michael Parnell, brother of the accused CEO, and Mary Wilkerson, the Quality Assurance Manager of the company, were tried alongside Parnell and are also set to be sentenced.
Peanut Corporation is notorious for quality control issues. Critics have revealed that the company's factories in Georgia are operated under weak sanitary standards. The product recalls preicipitated by the discovery of salmonella bacteria in the company's product between 2008 and 2009 has been described as one of the most extensive food recalls in the history of the country.
This is one of the first trials of a food processing company in a food poisoning case. Prosecutors have told the press that they hope it serves as a precedent and notifies the producers of consumable goods that they will be held to book for their actions that puts the public's health at risk.
