Tainted Peanut Butter......

One more example of deregulation NOT working. 

Unless your idea of working is people eating tainted peanut butter and dying. If that was the goal then this story should make you proud.

Just like GM knowing their ignition switches were faulty (and saying NOTHING) while people dyed.

This company knew their peanut butter was contaminated (with Salmonella) and also said nothing. Once again people died.

Notice the trend?

There were no laws requiring a test for salmonella. There were no laws preventing the shipment of tainted products either. It was assumed companies would do the right thing. But (as I like to point out) companies never do the right thing.

If you can

A) ship tainted product which might (and did) kill people, but make money doing it….Well why wouldn’t you?

B) You throw the tainted product in the garbage and lose money. Nobody ever chooses B.

The hope is once the dead bodies start piling up nobody realizes its because of your tainted product.

In this case people figured it out. Darn it!

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/breaking-news/index.ssf/2014/08/trial_of_peanut_company_leader.html

Witnesses say Stewart Parnell and others at Peanut Corporation of America knowingly shipped salmonella-tainted products, and that they sent customers lab results from other clean batches rather than wait for tests to confirm their products were free of deadly bacteria.

Defense lawyers correctly noted for the jurors that salmonella tests aren't even required by federal law. (Deregulation)

Parnell and his two co-defendants face long prison sentences if convicted of knowingly shipping the contaminated peanut products linked to a nationwide salmonella outbreak that killed nine people and sickened 714 across 43 states in 2008 and 2009.

Their plant in rural Blakely, Georgia, was shut down and the company went bankrupt. Long after consumers ate contaminated peanut butter, ice cream, energy bars and other products, the outbreak prompted one of the largest food recalls in U.S. history.

"If they didn't require it, it did not get tested," Samuel Lightsey, who managed the Georgia plant during the outbreak, (Translation….If the government doesn’t force me to do the right thing than I am not doing it. I really hope the government doesn’t force me.)

FDA inspector Janet Gray walked the jury through documents showing at least eight of those salmonella-tainted lots were shipped to customers anyway. (F*ck it….Ship it)

"There is no legal requirement for testing at all for salmonella," Tom Bondurant, Stewart Parnell's defense lawyer, told jurors during opening statements Aug. 1. "There wasn't then, and there's not now." (Companies do not need the government to tell them what to do. Free markets means free from government interference. Salmonella is good natural flavoring. People like it. The government needs to mind their own business. Oh your tummy hurts…huh Don’t tell anyone you ate our peanut butter. I gotta go)

Public outcry over the peanut case and several other outbreaks of food borne illness led Congress to pass the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011, which was supposed to give the FDA more resources and enforcement power.

Three years later, most of its rules have not been published, and the FDA still doesn't require that products be free of salmonella when shipped, said Hanson. His organization sued the FDA and won a federal consent decree ordering the agency to implement the law by next year.