State of Oregon now saying at least 38 dead and another 60+ suspected.
If babies eating Gerber’s got sick from a contaminant in the food, what party is “responsible” would depend on how the contaminant got into the food, and whether there was a reasonable way for Gerber to have detected it before it was shipped out to stores. If a domestic or foreign terrorist stealthily contaminates an ingredient that is shipped to Gerber, with a contaminant that is difficult to detect and unlikely to specifically looked for, the “responsibility” would lie with the perpetrator of the act. If an employee on the canning machinery, with no history of trouble that Gerber’s could know about, decided one day to stealthily start putting a few drops of a strong poison into jars of an already tested batch of food, right before the lids go on, the employee would be at fault.
The trouble with the home-cooking route is that few pet owners are both knowledgeable and dedicated enough to supplement these foods so that they’re nutritionally complete. Not to mention that there have been problems from time to time with basic human food items (like the bagged spinach last year) and with supplements packaged for humans, so home-cooking is not a guarantee of safety.
The American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine is recommending that pet owners continue to feed their pets commercially prepared pet foods, and just avoid the specifically recalled items. I don’t think they’re stupid, and I don’t think any of them are taking up home-cooking for their pets’ food.