In 2008 and 2009 the Peanut Corporation of America (or PCA) entered into quite the scandal. It was discovered that many of the peanuts used in their products were tainted with salmonella, and worse yet, the CEO and many other employees and managers were aware of it. As expected, 1,800 products were recalled by the factory, due to 654 reported illnesses and nine deaths directly caused by the company’s salmonella outbreak (Irlbeck, Akers & Palmer, 2011). This particular case provides an excellent example of poor crisis management, and provides a framework of what corporations should avoid doing or not doing during a scandal. It also demonstrates the power of media in the public’s response to a corporate crisis. Here, I revisit this crisis as an example of why a company can go downhill so quickly.

What was not expected when this crisis came to fruition, was the poor manner in which their crisis management was handled. PCA leadership definitely made the crisis worse. Their leaders refused to testify in a court hearing which is a huge red flag of denial, and tried very little to cooperate with anyone. The case states, “As for the PCA owner and plant managers involved in shipping the tainted product, all pleaded not guilty” (Ulmer, Sellnow, & Seeger, 2015). The issue that arose, is that they were guilty. Not only were they guilty, but they had blatantly lied about the testing of their products, and denied any claims stating that the products might be tainted. The company neglected to inform consumers of the contamination until the salmonella outbreaks were traced back to the company. The PCA in no way adapted to the scandal being presented. They remained stoic, uncaring, and uncooperative throughout the crisis. Rather than attempt to make amends, they used a denial tactic and refused to take responsibility for the crisis entirely. The company was investigated, members of the company were put on trial, and eventually, charges were pressed against the CEO as well as several others in which they were found guilty. The extent of the outbreak, combined with the poor way in which it was handled, PCA quickly went bankrupt in 2009 and shut down (Irlbeck, Akers & Palmer, 2011).

News framing is one thing that definitely had a hand in driving the company into bankruptcy faster than they might have had there been no news coverage. Framing in general is how someone portrays a situation in order to affect the target audience in a specific way. Media has a powerful effect in framing, because almost everyone has access to it, and especially now, where articles and news shows up immediately online. In food safety, the media plays a large role in bringing the public’s attention to the issue, and telling them how to feel about it.

An article Food Safety News’ website claimed, “Media coverage of a hazard may increase its perceived risk by agenda setting (telling people what to think about) or by providing salient information that increases top-of-mind awareness of the hazard." In this case, just doing a simple Facebook search of Peanut Corporation of America brings up many articles posted by news centers or other pages, and one can see that many commenters felt strongly about the issue.

The Facebook page NaturalNews.com posted an article from their website called, “Stewart Parnell, former owner of the Peanut Corporation of America, may receive life sentence for contaminated peanut butter,” and got many responses in the comment section of the post. Hank Lee commented, “If guilty they need to be punished to the maximum extent of the law." Sharon McGeein commented, “People should always be held accountable for what their company does if they know about it. A slap on the wrist just won't stop them from doing it again." Glancing through other similar posts, the rhetoric is about the same. People are angry about the corporation doing what it did, and people know that the company lied. The general response is that they are glad the CEO is in prison, and many people stated that he deserves more time than what he was sentenced.

Due to this type of framing by the news and social media outlets, there was no way the PCA could even enact a renewal plan. During a crisis, oftentimes a company will have a renewal plan in place; a plan to come back from a crisis while keeping respect from stakeholders and making things right with them. However, the Peanut Corporation of America did not do that. In the New York Times article, “Peanut Corporation of America to Liquidate,” Andrew Martin states, “Company officials could not be located for comment and have not spoken publicly since the outbreak began." The company made a point of basically saying nothing at all throughout this crisis, rather than attempting to own up to what happened and rebuild the trust they had been given with stakeholders. As evidenced by the previously mentioned social media responses however, it is obvious that they never repaired relationships with anyone. Perhaps what the company was hoping to accomplish, was to stay out of the spotlight publicly and wait for it to blow over. This may have occurred had the company come forward to the public years earlier when they originally received test results showing salmonella. They could have issued a public warning and apology stating that they would work harder to ensure that no further products were affected in the future. This is not what happened though, and the company truly was too quiet and used the denial tactic too often in order to ever make a comeback from what happened.

Interestingly enough the people who did try and correct any sort of public view of the crisis was the company’s proxy communicators. I believe the proxy communicators tried far harder than the PCA. The book mentions, “The CDC, FDA, and some industry leaders such as Jif and Peter Pan communicated admirably in the absence of information from PCA” (157). The company itself did initially release an apology actually, but this was after the outbreak had become widespread and they were in hot water. The FDA however, was willing to let the public know that the PCA had failed to disclose the salmonella tests to investigators (Early County News, 2009). The proxy communicators in this case essentially, were telling the truth for the company, because the company failed to be honest.

In analyzing this case, it is interesting to see how much of a clear cut disaster it was. The Peanut Corporation was one giant corporate crisis that should not have happened at all to the extent that it did. A good crisis management plan accounts for news framing, public backlash, and has a method of apologizing for anything on the company’s behalf. The company may have had a plan in place, but if they did it was not used. Part of the reason why what they did was such a faux-pas, is the nature of food-borne crisis in general. The Peanut Corporation of America was not distributing a small number of products. It wasn’t just peanut butter that was recalled, it was over 1,000 peanut based products. As the book describes it, the managers were aware their products would be used in a mass variety of foods to cook, so it was a ticking time bomb of a disaster waiting to happen (Seeger, 2015). With food recalls, it’s incredibly important that the public be constantly updated about it so that they can react accordingly. Since the company did not really speak throughout the crisis, people were unsure of what products safe, or if any peanut products were safe at all, leaving Jif and Peter Pan to answer questions. The book cites Hallman and Cuite (2009) as saying when consumers:

“‘cannot successfully distinguish affected from unaffected products, they are likely to either under-react by assuming that they do not own any of the recalled products or overreact by discarding or avoiding the purchase of anything that resembles it’” (Seeger, 2015).

The problem with under-reacting with this specific case, is that it likely led to many more cases of salmonella poisoning. With overreacting, it led to other peanut companies losing sales because people were now confused and unsure whose products were actually possibly contaminated. All of this could have been avoided if the company had more extensively alerted the public. They should have given a comprehensive list of what was contaminated, what was not contaminated, the dates on products to be avoided etc. The FDA instead had to do this for them, and created a website listing all products and constantly updating it as the list grew or changed. Because of overreaction, companies such as Jif and Peter Pan then had to clarify that they were not using peanut products associated with the PCA in order to avoid a crisis of their own (Seeger, 2015).

The 2009 Peanut Corporation of America is a crisis that could have been avoided. It is a shining example to other companies, especially food companies, of what not to do should they ever face a similar issue. It was a crisis affected by news framing, poor management,, and a lack of crisis planning. The company neglected to properly inform its stakeholders during a time when the salmonella was first detected, when the crisis could have been averted. As a consequence, the company went bankrupt and multiple people within the company will now serve jail or prison time, serving as an example to future crises.