I don't know about you, but I usually don't have time to do rigorous testing on every food item I buy from the grocery store. Life is busy these days. /s

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It'd be nice to live in a society where common, basic food and drink products designed to be consumed by humans and sold in your local grocery store have some sort of safety guarantee.

E.g. Someone checked for toxic chemicals

If you buy drinking water at any retail outlet you should be able to assume it won't kill you. Obviously.

Exactly. My point is: some people seem to elevate Whole Foods to some pedestal, as if the products they sell are somehow healthier than those of other retailers. In fact they sell products made by third-party manufacturers, just like any supermarket.

I've never been into a Whole Foods; I imagine they have some stuff that I couldn't get in other shops, and I imagine that everything is marked-up, whether it's exclusive or not, and whether it's fresh or canned. Is that about right?

I don't think anyone actually thought that Whole Foods was special. It's just the specific store that happened to sell this poison stuff. It could have been Kroger or Food Lion or whatever and OP would still have legitimately said "If you buy something at X you should be able to assume it won’t kill you."

Nah I hate Whole Foods. That was just the retail outlet that was mentioned as carrying this. Dunno if it’s even true honestly.

In general, it’s a reasonable assumption, in a developed country, that if you buy water in a shop it should be safe. The obvious liable parties here would be the manufacturer, maybe the retailer, maybe the relevant regulator, maybe the government (for not giving the regulators sufficient powers to deal with this sort of thing upfront). Dunno how you get to the _purchaser_ being liable.