Last Friday I spoke at the Government Accountability Project Food Integrity Campaign conference. During the lunch break, food safety attorney and advocate Bill Marler hosted a press event with 10 family members of victims of the 2009 Salmonella outbreak in peanuts. Hundreds of companies recalled thousands of products made with peanuts from Peanut Corporation of America (PCA). At least 700 people became ill with Salmonella infections after eating those products, and 9 died.

Earlier that day, Marler and his clients had met with attorneys from the Department of Justice to demand that criminal charges to be brought against former CEO of PCA, Stewart Parnell.

The facts of the case are staggering. The Congressional investigation that followed the outbreak uncovered internal emails suggesting Parnell knew his company was shipping Salmonella-contaminated peanuts.

“In my many years of handling food safety cases, I’ve yet to see a circumstance that has so clearly warranted criminal prosecution as the corporate mismanagement involved in the PCA outbreak,” said Marler.

But what will forever stick in my memory about attending this press event is the faces and voices of the family members whose lives were changed forever as a result of one company’s greed.

Shirley Hullett, from North Carolina, broke down in tears as she described how her 67-year-old husband Bobby Ray suffered excruciating pain before he was even diagnosed correctly, but by then it was too late. Now she’s a widow struggling to make ends meet. Her son and daughter-in-law also spoke, calling for justice to be done, during which Mrs. Hullett continued to cry as she sat listening to them. (I am crying as I remember it now.)

Gabrielle Meunier, the Vermont mother of a seven-year-old boy who got very sick, talked about the pain her son went though. “Mommy, it hurts so much I want to die,” little Christopher told her. And yet this mother was unable to even touch him to comfort him because his skin was so inflamed.

But this family was “lucky” because Christopher survived. Still, his immune system remains compromised such that even the slightest illness could turn into a serious condition.

Randy Napier came from Ohio to talk about how he lost his mother, Nellie Napier (age 85) who he was obviously very close to. He described how she scraped by in her younger years working for very little to help support her family. He finished by holding up a dollar bill, his hands shaking, saying: “To Stewart Parnell, this was worth more than my mother’s life.”