Former owner of Virginia peanut company faces charges in salmonella case

On March 21, 2007, the owner of Virginia-based Peanut Corp. of America seemed impatient.

Informed that a customer’s shipment might be delayed because the results of a salmonella test were not yet available, Stewart Parnell decided not to wait.

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“S---, just ship it,” he wrote in an e-mail, according to a newly released federal indictment. “I can’t afford to loose [sic] another customer.”

The company billed itself as “The Processor of the World’s Finest Peanut Products” with a “remarkable food-safety record.” In reality, its products had tested positive for salmonella contamination half a dozen times in recent years, and Parnell himself had given the green light to shipments despite containers that were partially “covered in dust and rat crap,” according to court documents.

PCA’s shipments kept heading out the door to customers across the country, from small family-owned businesses to multinational food corporations. The company’s products ended up in ice cream, snack crackers, dog biscuits and peanut butter.

They also triggered a nationwide salmonella outbreak in 2008 and 2009 that investigators say sickened hundreds of people and killed nine others, largely because of recklessness on the part of company officials and abysmal conditions at a plant in Blakely, Ga.

On Thursday, four years after that deadly episode, the government indicted Parnell and three other former employees at the now-defunct company on criminal fraud charges.

Parnell, 58, faces charges of mail and wire fraud, shipping adulterated and misbranded food across state lines, and obstruction of justice. Other former officials of the Lynchburg-based company facing fraud and conspiracy charges include Michael Parnell, 54, of Virginia, Parnell’s brother and a former company supervisor, and plant operator Samuel Lightsey, 48, of Georgia. A former quality-assurance manager, Mary Wilkerson, 39, of Georgia was included in the obstruction-of-justice charges. Authorities said another former employee, Daniel Kilgore, 44, also of Georgia, waived a formal indictment and pleaded guilty to mail and wire fraud, among other charges.

A 76-count indictment filed in a Georgia federal court asserts that the officials conspired to mislead customers about unsanitary factory conditions and the existence of harmful pathogens in the company’s products. In addition, investigators say they fabricated lab test results, lied to government inspectors and deliberately shipped products contaminated with salmonella throughout the country.

“When those responsible for producing or supplying our food lie and cut corners, as alleged in the indictment, they put all of us at risk,” Stuart F. Delery, head of the Justice Department’s civil division, said Thursday in announcing the indictments. ‘‘The Department of Justice will not hesitate to pursue any person whose criminal conduct risks the safety of Americans who have done nothing more than eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.’’

Attorneys for Parnell, who, like the other defendants, is expected to appear in Georgia federal court soon, said in a statement on their Web site that they would “prepare for a vigorous defense.” They said state and federal officials had made regular visits to the Georgia facility over the years and had “made no objections” to the company’s testing policies.