Stewart Parnell: Salmonella Outbreak, Sentence, and Food Safety Reform

Stewart Parnell, the former owner and president of the Peanut Corporation of America, is serving 28 years in federal prison for knowingly shipping salmonella-contaminated peanut products that sickened hundreds of people and killed nine in 2008 and 2009. A federal jury in Georgia convicted him in 2014 on 67 felony counts tied to the outbreak, and in 2015 he received the harshest criminal sentence ever imposed on a food producer in the United States. As of 2025, at age 70, he remains incarcerated with more than a dozen years left to serve.

What the Outbreak Did

The Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak linked to PCA began on September 1, 2008, when the first victim fell ill. By the time the CDC declared it over in April 2009, at least 714 people across 46 states had been sickened and nine had died, with deaths reported in Minnesota, Ohio, Virginia, Idaho, and North Carolina.¹ One court filing later put the true number of people affected at roughly 20,000.²

PCA was not a consumer brand. It sold bulk peanut butter and peanut paste to hundreds of food companies, so contamination from its Blakely, Georgia plant traveled into snack crackers, cookies, ice cream, and pet food. Around 3,900 products from dozens of manufacturers were pulled from shelves, including Kellogg’s Austin and Keebler peanut butter crackers, in one of the largest recalls in U.S. history.³ Recall costs to PCA’s customers were estimated at $143 million.¹ PCA filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on February 13, 2009.⁴

What Parnell Did

What separated this outbreak from an industrial accident, and what put Parnell in prison, was the company’s conduct before and during the contamination.

FDA investigators found that PCA had shipped products before receiving salmonella test results on at least 12 occasions between 2007 and 2009.⁵ When lab tests came back positive for salmonella, PCA’s practice was to retest the same batch at a different laboratory. If a later test came back clean, the product went out. Internal emails showed that when Parnell was told a shipment was being held because salmonella results were not yet in, he instructed employees to “just ship it.”⁶ In another email he complained about “huge $$$$$” being lost to testing delays.⁷

The paperwork was also fabricated. Instead of forwarding original lab reports to customers, PCA staff copied selected information onto Certificates of Analysis. Positive results were omitted, certificates cited testing from different lots, and some contained information that was incomplete or invented. In some cases, executives told customers products were free of salmonella when no testing had been done at all.⁸⁶ Darlene Cowart, president of a lab called J. Leek Associates that PCA had used, told congressional investigators PCA stopped using her lab after it produced “too many positive tests.”⁹

On January 12, 2009, with the outbreak already unfolding, Parnell emailed his employees claiming, “We have never found any salmonella at all.” At least 12 documented positive results, dating back to June 2007, contradicted him.⁹

The physical plant matched the paperwork. Inspectors at the Blakely facility documented a leaking roof, roaches, rodents, mold, and water stains, describing the plant as “riddled with unsanitary and unsafe conditions.” A former sanitation worker told reporters “it rained in there,” and experts said the roof gap could carry bird and rodent droppings into the peanut stream.¹⁰ A second PCA plant in Plainview, Texas was shut down on February 12, 2009 after inspectors found dead mice in a crawl space above processing rooms, droppings on countertops, and recalled Blakely product stored alongside outgoing shipments with no separation.¹¹

The Congressional Hearing and the Fifth Amendment

On February 11, 2009, Parnell and Blakely plant manager Samuel Lightsey were subpoenaed to the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Both invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer questions. The appearance lasted less than 10 minutes.⁷

Chairman Bart Stupak asked Parnell whether he had knowingly shipped contaminated products. Parnell read the same sentence to every question: “On the advice of my counsel, I respectfully decline to answer your question based on the protection afforded me under the United States Constitution.” Rep. Greg Walden held up a container of recalled product and asked Parnell if he would eat it. Parnell again declined.¹² The same hearing featured Jeffrey Almer, whose mother Shirley had died in late 2008 after eating contaminated peanut butter while recovering from cancer.

Charges, Trial, and Sentence

On February 20, 2013, a federal grand jury in the Middle District of Georgia returned a 76-count indictment against Stewart Parnell, his brother Michael Parnell (a food broker who worked for PCA), quality assurance manager Mary Wilkerson, and plant manager Samuel Lightsey. Charges included conspiracy, introducing adulterated and misbranded food into interstate commerce with intent to defraud, wire fraud, and obstruction of justice.¹³

Lightsey and a second plant manager, Daniel Kilgore, pleaded guilty and cooperated. Lightsey spent nine days on the stand testifying against Parnell.¹⁴ The remaining three defendants went to trial before Judge W. Louis Sands in Albany, Georgia. The trial ran 34 days.

On September 19, 2014, the jury convicted all three. Stewart Parnell was found guilty on 67 felony counts. Michael Parnell was convicted on 30, including conspiracy, mail and wire fraud, and selling misbranded food. Mary Wilkerson was convicted of one count of obstruction of justice for lying to a federal investigator about her knowledge of positive salmonella tests, and acquitted on a second count. Prosecutors called it a “mammoth conspiracy” in which “food safety took a back seat to getting shipments out.”¹⁵

The statutory maximum exposure for Stewart Parnell exceeded 800 years. On September 21, 2015, Judge Sands sentenced him to 28 years, the harshest sentence ever handed down in a U.S. food safety case.¹⁶ Michael Parnell received 20 years.⁶ Wilkerson received five years.¹⁷ Lightsey got three years for his cooperation, and Kilgore also received a reduced sentence.¹⁴

Parnell told the court at sentencing that he was sorry for the outbreak. Jeff Almer had said before sentencing that he could not forgive Parnell, because Parnell had never asked for forgiveness.¹

In April 2016, Judge Sands ruled that none of the convicted defendants had to pay restitution to victims, citing an exception to the Mandatory Victims’ Restitution Act because identifying and calculating losses for so many victims would “unduly complicate or prolong the sentencing process.” Some victims had already been paid through a $12 million liability insurance fund distributed in the PCA bankruptcy.¹⁸

Appeals and Current Status

On January 23, 2018, a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the convictions and sentences on all issues, calling the government’s evidence “overwhelming.” The defense had argued, among other things, that jurors were exposed to extrinsic information about the nine deaths (which was not formally admitted at trial), that lay witnesses should not have been permitted to describe the Certificates of Analysis as “false,” and that the loss calculations used to enhance the Parnells’ sentences were flawed. The panel acknowledged some jurors may have become aware of the deaths but found the exposure “too vague to be prejudicial.”¹⁹

Beginning in 2019, both Parnell brothers filed federal habeas petitions arguing their trial lawyers were constitutionally ineffective for failing to seek a change of venue given pretrial publicity in the Albany area. The district court denied both. The Eleventh Circuit heard argument in September 2024 on the narrow question of whether pretrial publicity was severe enough that jury prejudice should have been presumed, and on August 11, 2025, it rejected the ineffective assistance claims and affirmed the denials, effectively ending six years of post-conviction challenges.²⁰²¹

Mary Wilkerson finished her five-year sentence and was released on February 2, 2020.¹⁷ As of early 2025, Stewart Parnell was 70 and Michael Parnell was 65, both still in federal prison, with Stewart facing more than a dozen years yet to serve.²¹

How the Case Changed U.S. Food Safety Law

The PCA outbreak did more than end one company and one executive’s career. It ran alongside a congressional debate over a federal food oversight system that had not been meaningfully reformed in more than 70 years, and it showed lawmakers what a single contaminated bulk ingredient flowing into hundreds of finished products could do.²²

Jeff Almer and other affected families became fixtures on Capitol Hill, pressing legislators for action. On January 4, 2011, President Barack Obama signed the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act into law.²³ FSMA shifted federal regulation from reacting to outbreaks toward preventing them. It requires food manufacturers to write hazard analysis plans, identify contamination risks, and put preventive controls in place. It also gave the FDA power to order mandatory recalls when companies will not act voluntarily, and to block imports from facilities that refuse inspection.²⁴ Families of PCA victims have continued to testify at FDA implementation meetings and to lobby appropriators for enforcement funding.²²

1
The Guardian. Peanut Corp Owner Sorry for Salmonella Outbreak
2
Courthouse News Service. Peanut Execs Convicted of Fraud Over Deadly Salmonella Outbreak Appeal Prison Sentences
3
CDC. Salmonella Typhimurium – Peanut Butter
4
USDA Economic Research Service. Peanut Recall and Salmonella Outbreak
5
Food Safety News. Peanut Corporation of America: From Inception to Indictment, a Timeline
6
NPR. Peanut Exec Gets 28 Years in Prison for Deadly Salmonella Outbreak
7
CNN. Peanut Company President Pleads the Fifth
8
U.S. Department of Justice. Peanut Corporation of America Former Officials and Broker Convicted
9
GovInfo. The Salmonella Outbreak: The Continued Failure to Protect the Food Supply
10
Marler Clark. Peanut Corp’s Leaky Roof a Suspect in Salmonella Cases
11
CIDRAP. FDA Details Mess at Texas Plant Tied to Salmonella Cases
12
NPR. Peanut Company President Pleads the Fifth
13
U.S. Department of Justice. Former Officials and Broker of Peanut Corporation of America Indicted
14
U.S. Department of Justice. Former Peanut Company Officials Sentenced to Prison
15
Food Safety News. Guilty, Guilty, and Guilty in PCA Criminal Trial in Albany, GA
16
ABC News. Peanut Exec Sentenced to 28 Years in Prison
17
Food Safety News. Quality Control Officer for Peanut Corp of America Freed From Federal Custody
18
Food Safety News. No Restitution Will Be Paid to Peanut Corporation of America Victims
19
Food Safety News. Court Denies All Peanut Corp of America Criminal Appeals
20
FindLaw. United States v. Parnell
21
Food Safety News. Parnell Brothers Begin the Sixth Year of Seeking Early Release
22
The Pew Charitable Trusts. Families Affected by Contaminated Peanut Butter Pivotal to Enactment and Implementation
23
CNN. Peanut Salmonella Trial
24
New England Journal of Medicine. The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act