Recently in my city they discovered that a laundromat had polluted the ground water. The owners are long gone. Unfortunately chemicals are forever. The municipality tried to send the bill to the current owners but that is not real justice either.
This is unfortunately a common issue in Canada :(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_wells_in_Alberta,_Canad...
Anyway, just saying there’s some nuance here. Like maybe if a government shuts down a business like this there needs to be some negotiation and an exit plan.
In software we build without considering how to sunset or deprecate. But perhaps we would build differently if we did so.
I think that's the point OP is pointing out, for better or worse (for what it's worth I believe "He suggests that a prior conflict with the CFIA over product labeling motivated them to close the factory before the inspection began" may be correct).
A company should have plans for cleaning up their product before just walking away and leaving other people to clean up their mess.
Maybe it's rather naive of me, but that's what I believe.