G.W. Carver. Photo: NPS

When Peanut Corp. of America CEO Stewart Parnell took the Fifth this week instead of telling the House Committee on Energy and Commerce why he let salmonella-tainted peanut butter kill eight people (so far) and sicken thousands, the setting was ironic.

It was before another House committee (Ways and Means) in 1921 that the peanut’s greatest promoter, George Washington Carver, sprung onto the national scene with willing, winning, inventive testimony that helped propelled the lowly product of the South to prominence and many uses in the food industry. 

It was a different story on Wednesday: Parnell cemented his status as a pariah to the food industry and beyond with his repeated refusal to answer the committee’s questions about what he knew of his plants’ poisoned peanuts and the suffering his company has caused:

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, on the advice of my counsel, I respectfully decline to answer your question based on the protection afforded me under the United States Constitution.

Parnell’s appearance took place in a committee hearing room in Washington, D.C. So did Carver’s, 88 years earlier. But in every other way the scene this week couldn’t have been farther from Carver’s triumphant Jan. 21, 1921, debut on the national stage on behalf of the peanut.

One striking note: After demonstrating dozens of uses for the peanut, Carver made this now-portentous-sounding claim:

I do not know of a single case — that is, I mean [a] normal [person] — that complains because peanuts hurt them.

A transcript of his testimony appears in a 1991 book called “George Washington Carver: In His Own Words,” and all but two of 12 pages can be read online. Here are a few excerpts from his charming remarks (even in the face of racist digs):

Mr. CARVER: Mr. Chairman, I have been asked by the United Peanut Growers’ Association to tell you something about the possibility of the peanut … [T]he peanut comes in, I think, for one of the most remarkable crops … [I]t has possibilities that we are just beginning to find out.

This is the crushed cake … which may be used in all sorts of combinations — for flours and meals and breakfast foods and a great many things that I have not time to touch upon just now…. This is another confection. It is peanuts covered with chocolate. As I passed through Greensboro, S.C, I noticed in one of the stores that this was displayed on the market, and, as it is understood better, more of it is going to be made up into this form. Here is a breakfast food. I am very sorry that you can not taste this, so I will taste it for you. [Laughter] Now this is a combination and, by the way, one of the finest breakfast foods that you or anyone else has ever seen. It is a combination of the sweet potato and the peanut, and if you will pardon a little digression here I will state that the peanut and the sweet potato are twin brothers and cannot and should not be separated. They are two of the greatest products that God has ever given us.

Mr. [John Q.] TILSON [R-Conn.]: Do you want a watermelon to go along with that? …

Mr. CARVER: Here is the original salted peanut, for which there is an increasing demand, and here is a very fine peanut bar. The peanut bar is coming into prominence in a way that very few of us recognize, and the manufacturers of this peanut bar have learned that it is a very difficult matter to get a binder for it, something to stick it together. That is found in the sweet potato syrup. …

Now there is an entirely new thing in the way of combinations. It is a new thing for making ice cream … a very new product that is going to have considerable value. …

I wish to say here in all sincerity that America produces better peanuts than any other part of the world, as far as I have been able to test them out. …

Here is a bottle of milk that is extracted from peanuts. Now, it is absolutely impossible to tell that milk from cow’s milk in looks and general appearance. This is normal milk. …

Now here is a very attractive product — an instant coffee. … Here is a bottle of Worcestershire sauce. … Now here is a very highly flavored sauce that imitates the Chinese sauce that enters into chop suey and the various Chinese confections that they are so very fond of. …

[T]he curds can be taken out and made into the various fancy cheeses the Neufchatel and Edam …

Mr. CAREW: Did you make all of these products yourself?

Mr. CARVER: Yes, sir. They are made there in the research laboratory. That is what the research laboratory is for. …

The sweet potato products now number 107 up to date. … The peanut products are going to beat the sweet-potato products by far. I have just begun with the peanut. So what is going to come of it why we do not know.

This is the very last thing. Now this is a pomade. That is, it is a face cream and will be attractive to the ladies …

Mr. GARNER: I understood you to say that the properties of the peanut combined with the properties of the sweet potato was a balanced ration, and that you could destroy all other vegetable life and continue to sustain the human race?

Mr. CARVER: Yes, sir. Because you can make up the necessary food elements there. … Then again if we think of how the peanut is used, it is the only thing that is universally used among civilized and uncivilized people, and all sorts of animals like it, and I do not know of a single case — that is, I mean normal — that complains because peanuts hurt them.

Born to slavery in Missouri near the end of the Civil War, George Washington Carver graduated from high school in Minneapolis — Minneapolis, Kan., that is.

He spent the better part of the 1890s studying at Iowa State University before accepting Booker T. Washington’s offer to head the agriculture department at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute.

One place to read more about his life, research, inventions and other pursuits is the Web site of the National Park Service’s George Washington Carver National Monument in Diamond, Mo.