Therefore, the attention has been drawn from quantity of food to quality and safety. A gap between food demand and safe food supply becomes an urgent issue to be solved, which also affects global food market and food security.
Stakeholders want to be associated with socially responsible companies, and as such expect them to adhere to a certain standard of behaviour in order to gain their trust. Companies are under strong pressure to behave ethically. They have to earn a ‘license to operate’.
We know that food hazards have the potential to cause serious damage to the body. Many sicknesses transmitted by foods can lead to adverse health effects, such as chronic conditions, injuries, and debilities. By looking at how many cases of foodborne illness are reported, we’re able to identify the prevalence of food hazards in that location at a certain point in time. In 2006 alone, the CDC reported over 27.5 thousand documented outbreaks of foodborne disease in the United States (Friis, 2012). That being said, it’s clear that as a nation we still struggle to ensure that our food is safe for consumption by the consumer. Even with all of the modern technology, guidelines, and regulations in place, food hazards are still able to reach the general population. However, it’s important to consider that the fault is not always due to errors in quality control during production and manufacturing. Once in the hands of the consumer, there’s a lot of room for error. This is the single biggest contributor to the number of reported cases of foodborne illness. In the United States, one of the world’s most developed nations, the prevalence of foodborne illness and disease remains high because the majority of the population is not educated well enough on the subject and often
On January 4, 2011 President Obama signed into law The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). This law has shed new light on the safety and security of our food supply. The last update to the food safety laws in the United States was in 1938. The food safety modernization act pays special attention at trying to modernize the food safety policies in the United States in hopes to prevent problems and concerns before they happen. As we all know, most of our food comes from overseas or sometimes from your neighboring state. The food products travel by car, truck, airplane, boat, or even train. We are all very happy to be receiving our bananas from Costa Rica and all of our other fresh fruits and vegetables that are imported into the United States, but we never stop to think about what pathogens are contaminating our produce and other foods on the way over and if they are safe for us to eat. In an article by Neal Fortin, he states that the law also gives the FDA new standards to hold imported foods to the domestic food standards and it also encourages the FDA to establish and develo...
In recent years, companies are becoming socially responsible and now stakeholders almost expect a company to have CSR policies. Therefore, in twentieth century, corporate social responsibility (CSR) became an important development in public life (Barnett, ND).Corporate social responsibility is defined as “the ways in which an organisation exceeds the minimum obligations to stakeholders specified through regulation and corporate governance” (Johnson, Schools and Whittington, N.D cited in March, 2012). Stakeholders can be defined as “those individuals or groups who depend on the organisation to fulfil their own goals and on whom, in turn, the organisation depends” (Johnson, Schools and Whittington, N.D cited in March, 2012). There are many purposes for this essay, the first purpose is to descried the key principles of corporate social responsibility and explain their importance for stakeholders. Secondly, is to show how far this company follows those principles in order to be accountable to at least three of its stakeholders. In this essay, three stakeholders, environment, customers and employees will be evaluated respectively and the key principles of the stakeholders will be examined.
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles also known, as CHIRLA is a Los Angeles based organization that focus their attention on immigrant rights. This organization works towards serving people and institutions to achieve power, transform the public’s opinion, and to fully realize labor, civil, and human rights. Furthermore, CHIRLA aids undocumented immigrants “towards the pathway of citizenship while informing them about their rights in the workforce”. In addition, the organization is financially supported by the Ford Foundation whom advocates towards educating immigrants about the policies and laws of the Control Act and the Immigration Reform. As a result, CHIRLA focuses on the political advocacy, community organization,
Many companies are now looking into their business practices and how it benefits society. Corporate responsibility continues to be impacted as consumer awareness to global issues grows. For example, a small locally owned grocery store located in a metropolitan area just closed the doors to two stores located in high-crime-rated areas of the city due to no financial gains. The store just added a health conscious section for consumers that requested a need for it in the store, even though the cost and marginal is higher than most options in the store. With all of that going on the owner of the store was approached by a local food bank for one day old products that can be donated to them to help the community. The owner declined to help by citing that he feels by help he is opening a chance for loss of revenues due to employees not being honest. He thinks that his employees will just say that products are being donated when they are stealing.
Furthermore, food safety is a major issue in the United States. Foodborne illness has caused an estimated 1 and 6 Americans to be sickened, 128,000 hospitalizations, and cause 3,000 deaths each year (http://www.sustainabletable.org/). These numbers may seem shocking, but they are all too real. All of the high levels
There are several criticisms about how CSR is often just a smokescreen. Critics have objected on 3 main points – 1. The works of CSR should be the government’s responsibility, 2. It distracts attention from what companies should really be doing, 3. It involves the use of shareholders’ money
Fr Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, a Catholic Priest, founded the Mondragon Corporation, a cooperative in the Basque region of Spain in 1956. The region suffered greatly during the Spanish Civil War (Thomson, 2010) and Fr Jose felt it his calling to help his regions people recover, allowing them to continue to support themselves. Fr Jose’s motive was to promote individuals’ moral character as well as social justice through the creation of a new kind of work place, one that encouraged hard work, cooperation, shared rewards, and individual responsibility. At the same time, he sought to generate employment and income in a region that had been impoverished by war, dictatorship and neglect (Lafuente, 2012). The initial cooperative was successful and from that much other cooperative business emerged in industries including banking, manufacturing, distribution and education. The Mondragon Corporation multiplied until it became the biggest employer in the region (Witzel, 2003). The Mondragon Corporation now consists of over 82,000 people in an integrated group of so...
- Ensuring the quality of import goods by upholding regulated standards, especially where health risk concerns are at the forefront (i.e., bottom dwellers) (Carter, 2001).
The proposed solution can convince on all ethical levels. First, the solution violates not relevant principles or standards of conduct. It would be even more positive when the public finds out about these activities, because it would then possibly give even more support and also other companies (e.g. Del Monte and Dole) would be forced to rethink. Second, in the long run Chiquita and its executives can establish itself as an honest business partner and have the basis for excellent organizational performance, because the actions can speak for themselves. Communication with all stakeholders could improve the outcome of the proposed solution. Third, all consequences of the proposed solution are positive. In the short term, the Colombian employees are preferred, but the long term all stakeholders benefit and the core values of the company are respected.
Unnevehr, L. (2006) Food safety as a global public good: Is there underinvestment? Available at: http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/25733/1/pl06un01.pdf [Accessed: 20 April 2014]
would let them in on the corruption that when on. The firm had a tight control
Although primary objective for managers is to maximise shareholders’ wealth, but many firms are started to focus on other stakeholders’ interests in recent years. Company can prevent transfer the damage of stakeholders’ wealth to shareholders when focus on stakeholders’ interests. In other words, “social responsibility” for the companies is to maintenance stakeholders’ relations in order to provide long-term interests to shareholders. By this way, conflict, turnover and litigation of stakeholders can be minimise. Obviously, company can achieve their primary objective by cooperation with stakeholders instead of conflict with stakeholders (Smart, Megginson, Gitman, 2002).