The court found them guilty of professional negligence that caused injuries to 200 people through the poisoning. The victims were among some 13,000 people mainly in western Japan who suffered diarrhea and other symptoms of food-poisoning after consuming the contaminated milk products.
"The social impact of the poisoning case, which caused consumers to distrust the safety of milk products, was too serious to be condoned," presiding Judge Makoto Himuro said, adding the two have shown signs of remorse.
According to the court, a power outage at the Taiki plant on March 31, 2000, caused temperatures to rise and staphylococcus aureus bacteria to breed during the manufacturing of skimmed milk powder.
Kubota and Izumi neglected to take appropriate measures, including disposing of the contaminated powder, and the product was delivered April 14 to Snow Brand's Osaka plant despite the detection of abnormally high bacteria levels, the court said. Low-fat milk produced by the Osaka plant using the powder poisoned the 200, it said.
Kubota was also found guilty of violating the Food Sanitation Law for sending a false report on the cleaning of a tank to the public health center in August 2000 after the outbreak in an attempt to prevent the factory from being ordered to close.
So they were slack and then tried to cover their butts.. surely one would think that if the high levels of bacteria were detected that would be a signal NOT TO USE THE PRODUCT!!!
Staph A. is a shocker bacteria.. I used to test for it in my first ever real job after uni.. (food technology) and I was scared of that shiny black/green slime growing in the petrie dish....
Every morning at 6:00 am, a man delivers fresh milk, yogurt. Reasonably priced as well for fresh dairy.
speeding fines are more than that 
you can poison people kill people rape people steal. pollute. bribe and lie. you can make racist slurs and be RE elected as the govenor on Tokyo. 
