Recalls can Destroy Businesses

"Peanut Corporation of America, the company at the crux of the nationwide salmonella panic, filed for liquidation bankruptcy in February 2009, just a month after it first announced a recall of peanut butter products processed in its Blakely, Ga., plant. ...The salmonella outbreak sickened more than 700 people in 46 states and led to nine deaths."

It's things like this that make me scared to eat any processed food. Clearly there is a direct correlation between the outbreak and the company going bankrupt. With the number of outbreaks and recalls that happens, it seems that companies simply aren't cautious enough about the ingredients they use and the conditions in which they make their food. Not only was the outbreak responsible for nine deaths and many more sicknesses, but anyone who was employed at this corporation was out of work. That number is most likely in upwards of hundreds of people.

So, among a climate of people just getting back up on their feet, many more are put out of work. What's more, the plants closing affect local economies. It will be extremely difficult for people to get jobs in the town they live in because so many others are trying as well. In extreme cases, the crime rate in towns go up, and as a result, value of homes go down, and the cycle continues. But corporations are never held liable for the fates of the people that lose their jobs because of their irresponsibility. Corporations have nearly no liability, but they most definitely should.
Corporations need to be more responsible, because there is more at risk than the product they make being absent from store shelves.