A story in Sunday’s Washington Post details some of the inner-workings of Peanut Corp of America’s operations. One of the interviewees, David Brooks, a former buyer for a snack company, spoke to the culture of the family business:
Even as PCA was rapidly expanding, a former buyer for a major snack manufacturer said the Parnells found success by operating a low-cost business that relied on the cheapest peanuts they could find. They used minimum wage labor and a bare-bones front office.
"The old man [Hugh Parnell Sr.] used to look for distressed situations: Someone over-inventoried or had peanuts from last year that they had to move," said David Brooks, who was a buyer for a snack company that refused to purchase from Parnell because of concerns about sanitation and what he called the "culture" of the family business. "He would aggressively look for these, making phone calls, hunting people down. Stewart grew up in that and was the same way."
On three occasions in the mid-1980s, Brooks inspected PCA’s Gorman plant to determine whether to buy its peanut products, he said. Each time, he gave the plant a failing grade.
"It was just filthy," said Brooks, who has since retired from the food business. "Dust was all over the beams, the braces of the building. The roofs leaked, the windows would be open, and birds would fly through the building. . . . It was just a time bomb waiting to go off, and everybody in the peanut industry in Georgia, Virginia and Texas — they all knew."
Parnell ran PCA from a converted garage behind his home in a wooded, upscale suburb. Earlier this week, kayaks and a covered powerboat sat in the driveway next to the two-story building. A sun-faded banner with a picture of a squirrel hangs nearby from Parnell’s house reading "Welcome to the Nut House."
Earlier this week I was on the Gil Gross Program, AM 810 San Francisco, talking about food safety culture, barfblog and our ideas on marketing food safety. Gil was all over the marketing to consumers idea.
Gil got that even if there was more oversight and inspection that something else is needed to push food safety along and was running with the idea that consumers can pressure industry to share more info — and demonstrate their food safety culture. I told him that there are lots of consumers looking for and able to handle more information about food safety, just saying that "we have a good food safety system" isn’t good enough anymore. It’s time for companies doing a good job on food safety to back it up and open their doors (post test results, put up web cams) and recapture some of the lost trust. You can listen to the interview here.
And for your weekend peanut butter-related YouTube clip, here’s a somewhat creepy video of a The Marathon’s 1961 hit, peanut butter (watch until at least 13 seconds into it for the creepiness).