Business Ethics - Menu Foods Case Reaction Paper

Menu food: a good lesson for us

In 2007, tainted pet foods, which were produced by Menu Foods, caused deaths of numerous pets around North America. The crisis shocked the whole market. A large scale recall of Menu Foods products occurred, and investigation of the issue got under way. After identification, an imported wheat gluten that tainted by chemical melamine was confirmed as the source of the problem. Although Menu Foods got the answer, it had already lost 40 million dollars due to the recall of 60 million packages of 93 brands. Paul Henderson, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Menu Foods, stated that “in over 35 years of business, Menu had never had a food safety-related product recall until the recent tragic event.” We can definitely understand that the word “tragic” represents a severe loss to the company. Nevertheless, such a lesson may not be a bad thing to the growth of company and the development of society.

All remedial actions are reasonable

From ethical perspective, I think Menu Foods’ remedial actions (i.e. recall, investigation and settling lawsuits) are reasonable and right. When analyzing the decision of the company, if we use Utilitarianism, it seems that Menu Foods should not spend so much at recall or at least delay it, because the large cost would turn out to be a heavy economic burden on the company. And it would scarify the shareholders’ profits. But in my opinion, using utilitarianism in this case can never be a wise choice. Suppose the company chose to hide the truth and deny the contamination at the beginning, then there would be a greater pressure from the pet owners and a greater crisis of confidence among clients. As a result, the corporate reputation would be badly impacted, following by a significant decrease in sales revenue. So, considering the consequence of the choice, as Consequentialism shows, Menu Foods had better recall its products and reinforce the investigation. In another way, according to Rawlsian...