The Peanut Butter Recall That Unfortunately Made History

Americans adore peanut butter, perhaps because so many of us ate it during our childhoods either in peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or with apple slices as a snack. So you can imagine people's shock in 2009 when this beloved food product was the subject of a recall unlike any other. While there had been peanut butter recalls before, like the ConAgra debacle of 2007, they hadn't attained the scope of the 2009 incident.

Starting in 2007 and continuing into 2008, peanut butter and peanut products, in general, were the source of a deadly strain of salmonella that killed nine people and caused the sickness of 700 others in a far-reaching outbreak that spread over 46 states. The peanuts came from Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) which was founded in 1977 and headquartered in Lynchburg, Virginia while the source of the tainted peanuts was a plant in Blakely, Georgia. To make matters worse, it was later found through investigation by the FDA that higher-ups at PCA not only knew about a possible salmonella contamination, they signed off on letting shipments depart the facility and reach their destinations which included schools and correctional facilities.

One of those higher-ups at PCA was a man by the name of Stewart Parnell, the owner and operator of the company. In a stunning, but not unjust, decision by a Georgia federal judge in 2015, Parnell was sentenced to 28 years in prison. While he could have received a life sentence, it still marked the first time a foodborne illness case resulted in felony charge convictions for an executive of a food company. Parnell's brother, a food broker for PCA, received 20 years while a quality assurance manager received five years. The company itself filed for bankruptcy and went under in early 2009.

But there were more than just legal ramifications. Though the recall didn't touch any major peanut butter brands like Jif or Peter Pan, people still avoided the product anyway out of an abundance of caution, causing sales of the creamy spread to plummet throughout 2009. This didn't help matters for peanut farmers, who were already experiencing hardship thanks to a huge surplus of peanuts the previous year which had resulted in lower payment for their crops.