Why are people dying from eating tainted meat?

Do you want the answer to the above burning question? Then read this linked article posted on the Globe and Mail website: New rules pulled lone watchdog off floor of contaminated meat plant, union says.

This article and the fact set of this case just blow my mind.

Irresponsible elected government officials and reckless business leaders who make decisions that result in citizens succumbing from eating poisoned food (insert Listeria here) or drinking poisoned water (insert Walkerton here) should be charged with criminal negligence causing death and they should go to jail.

And while we're at it - toss in a couple of bosses and the politicians they control, who constantly look the other way and continuously evade their responsbility to ensure that workplaces are healthy and safe for the workers.

The following quotes from the article are simply beyond belief:

.....At the Maple Leaf plant behind the listeria outbreak, a single federal inspector was relegated to auditing company paperwork and had to deal with several other plants, the manager and the union official said, contradicting the impression that officials had left last week that full-time watchdogs were on-site.....

.....Under the new rules, instead of heading to the plant floor to inspect with their own eyes, inspectors are sent to the office to confirm that the meat packer has performed the required tests and the results are satisfactory, Mr. Kingston said.

"We don't swab for listeria any more. The industry does all that themselves," he said. "They just document all this stuff. We read their reports. If their reports say they do everything fine, then they do everything fine.".....

.....Listeria is deadly only in high doses, Dr. Warriner noted.

"A big outbreak like this, definitely something went wrong," Dr. Warriner said. "The fact is listeria needs a very high dose ... How did such meat products get contaminated with such a high level of listeria in order to cause so much illness? It needs over a billion cells to actually cause illness."