I’ve been avoiding updating you all on the peanut butter situation for two reasons.  One, I’m sure most of you know what’s going on already.  And two, it’s pretty doggone depressing.  I do so like it when this blog is a happy, salmonella-free place where everyone takes responsibility for their own actions.  Dredging up the latest muck from the headlines on peanut butter sort of takes the happy-go-lucky out of me.  Wherefore, you ask?

Well, if the 2100 items currently on the FDA’s recall list weren’t reason enough, don’t worry—I have more for you to chew on.

Remember when I wrote about how the Peanut Corporation of America was shipping products from its Georgia plant which had tested positive for salmonella after additional testing for salmonella came up negative?  Remember when I mentioned how suspicious that seemed to me, how convenient it was that, time after time, it tested positive, then tested negative and was shipped?

Well, it was suspicious.  It turns out that PCA was shipping it even before those second tests came back in.  Apparently they must have been reeeeeal confident it was a “mistake.”  Of course, knowingly shipping a contaminated product is less an example of unsinkable optimism and more an example of a criminal offense, but who am I to nitpick?

Besides that, in case you missed it, on February 12, the Texas Department of State Health Services ordered the recall of all peanut products ever shipped from the Peanut Corporation of America’s four-year-old plant in Plainview, Texas, after discovering a charming assortment of dead rodents, rodent dookie, and bird feathers in the plant.  Not only had that plant never been inspected, but it had never even been licensed.  Somehow, though, it managed to get organic certification from a Texas Department of Agriculture inspector.  To be fair, salmonella is all-natural, right?  Heck, so are rodents and bird feathers.  And dookie.  Dookie’s definitely all-natural.  (Note:  That inspector got fired this month.  Not a coincidence.)

This makes you itch, doesn’t it?  All the people sickened, those eight who died in this mess, how incredibly avoidable it all was.  Doesn’t it make your head hurt and your stomach turn?  Don’t you just want the Peanut Corporation of America to be dragged across the coals and hung out to dry?  (How’s that for a mixed metaphor?)  Still, I’m sure many of you, like me, want the government to take decisive action to set a clear standard and make food processors sit up and take notice.  Surely you, too, want then to do something that will inspire additional safety programs in food processing plants and spur producers and processors to do everything they can to keep another crisis like this from happening again.

Unfortunately, the Peanut Corporation of America has taken what seems to be the (Corporate) American Way right out of this mess.  On February 13, they filed Chapter 7 Liquidation/Bankruptcy.  What does that mean? The Food Liability Law Blog cuts right to the heart of it:

Tort clamants, i.e., the victims and families of victims, are unsecured creditors within the meaning of the Bankruptcy Code.  In essence, PCA’s assets, such as they are, are being turned over to its banks, and except to the extent of any insurance that may be available, the victims will have no recovery from PCA.

It looks like PCA is doing what they can to wriggle out of accountability.  Thank the powers that be for insurance, right?

About that insurance…it gets a little uglier here, folks. All the happy-go-lucky is now officially gone from this blog.  Hartford Insurance Company, PCA’s backup plan, has filed a complaint for declaratory relief.  Click through to read the legal jargon, but the heart of it is this: They don’t want to pay, either.

All of which means, of course, that odds are looking pretty good that the ones to pay for this mess will be… the consumers themselves.

Raise your hand if you didn’t see that coming.