Cucumber ethics

Last week’s E-coli outbreak in Germany was another interesting case study in the ethics of risk management. A ferocious looking bacteria, thought to be carried by the very food we eat whenever we feel like a healthy option (i.e. salad vegetables) has led to a scare that has plummeted many of Europe’s farmers into severe financial troubles. On the face of it the numbers don’t quite hit home why exactly consumers and regulators across Europe (and especially in Germany) have reacted so strongly: while, sadly, 26 people have died so far from the E-coli outbreak, this number looks negligible in comparison to Germany’s 3,651 fatalities in road accidents annually (in 2010). Banning Spanish cucumbers – sure thing! But touching the fundamental right of Germans to speed without limit on the Autobahn? No way, no one even thinks about that.

Fair enough maybe - food is one of those things that does raise the risk perception more than almost any other. But one of the more curious things about the outbreak was the initial culprit: cucumbers (especially as attention eventually turned to those evil little bean sprouts). But of course it wasn't just any old cucumbers - still less German cucumbers - but Spanish cucumbers that were blamed. In a continuously integrating EU economy, suddenly a poor little vegetable becomes the carrier of nationalistic identities and accusations.

There is something about cucumbers, one has to admit. In the German context, the vegetable has once before been at the centre of a rather black humoured joke just in the wake of the unification in 1989. The German satirical magazine ‘Titanic’ opened with a picture of ‘Zonen-Gabi’ (‘Gabi from the East’) holding up ‘her first banana’: a cucumber, peeled in the style of a banana. This of course was to make fun of the chronic absence of exotic fruits in the East during the time of the wall. The cucumber became an epitome of the split national identity that divided the unifying halves of the country at the time.

Poor cucumbers have also been at the centre of many jokes about the regulatory frenzy of EU bureaucrats in Europe. Allegedly there exist norms that lay out not merely how long, hard and green a cucumber must be but which even stipulate the degree of a cucumber's curvature: at maximum, its arc can be no more than 10 millimetres per 10 centimetre length. Imposed on poor Polish or Czech farmers prior to their countries’ accession to the EU, these regulations made the vegetable a symbol of the hegemonic power of Brussels and the nearly totalitarian zeal of regulating even the smallest little detail. All symbolized by, yes, cucumbers!

How political the innocent vegetable can become was demonstrated nowhere more strongly than in Iraq. According the UK newspaper the Telegraph, a few years ago Al-Qaeda leaders in Anbar province allegedly banned women from buying cucumbers because they considered them to be ‘male’ vegetables, and therefore in violation of religious law. Tomatoes, however, were perfectly fine for women to buy because they were considered female.

Well, if we were to do more research on the cultural history of cucumbers, who knows where we might end up - but Crane and Matten have no intention of jeopardizing the ‘General Audiences’ rating of their blog! Still, who would have thought that the lowly green vegetable could be such a repository of ethical values and a tool for inter-cultural conflict. So next time you're in the supermarket remember to take a second look at those cucumbers. There's so much more to them than meets the eye.


Top photo by Surian Soosay. Reproduced under creative commons licence

Business ethics at the Toronto International Film Festival

At the moment, here in Toronto, we are in the midst of the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), which is one of the world's premiere festivals , up there with Cannes, Venice and others. The city is alive with movie folk, big name actors and directors, and excited film fanatics. It's a fun place to be.

Regular readers of the blog and some of our other work will know that we are enthusiastic advocates of the role of movies in enlightening us about various aspects of business ethics. And TIFF 08 is no exception, with a bunch of exciting new films that get to grips with some of the social, ethical and environmental challenges facing contemporary business across the globe. We'll talk about some of these movies in a moment.

But it's not just the movies that are putting corporate responsibility in the limelight at TIFF this year. With increasing commercialisation and corporate sponsorship of the festival, some critics are complaining that the one time "people's festival" has been taken over by big business interests. With priority entry at some venues for sponsors, just flashing your Visa card (Visa is one of the main sponsors) can get you early seating and a place in the special lounge with drinks and refreshments while everyone else has to queue outside. Understandably, not everyone is over-enamoured with the implications of these acts of "good citizenship" by corporations - or at least not when there are such strings attached.

But it's tough balancing act for arts organizations when governments such as the incumbent Canadian Conservative Government, make cuts to arts funding leaving the private sector as the next obvious port of call. If arts organizations go in this direction, the challenge is obviously to work out a relationship that creates meaningful value for both partners - and takes account of the various stakeholders of each institution. It's a difficult proposition, but an important one to get right if these partnerships are to be sustainable. TIFF has clearly had the first warning shot fired across its bows and festivals around the world would do well to make sure they systematically incorporate these concerns into their subsequent planning.

But onto the films...

This year's line up has a few hot new documentaries that look worth checking out, including these (for more details check out the full program at http://www.tiff08.ca/:

Food, Inc. directed by Robert Kenner explores how modern developments in food production pose risks to our health and the environment. According the TIFF 08 programme:

Food, Inc. carefully dissects the cozy relationships between business and government in both political parties. In opposition to these powerful interests, we meet people from all walks of life, from a Republican mother who lost her two-year-old son to E. coli poisoning to the founder of Stonyfield Farm Organic Yogurt, who flouts conventional left-wing dogma by seeing a positive side to Wal-Mart.

Upstream Battle, directed by Ben Kempas, about Pacific salman, Native Americans, hydro-electric dams, and water rights in Northern California and Oregon (see the trailer here):

"Upstream Battle is wonderfully nuanced, acknowledging the complexity of the situation. The other stakeholders in this ecosystem include farmers who rely on the water for irrigation; the neighbouring tribes of Yurok, Karuk and Klamath; and commercial fishermen who catch the salmon at sea. The film manages to humanize those on all sides, including the corporate employees whose own livelihoods are in flux over changing owners."

And for a dose of individual resistance to organizational corruption, Yes Madam, Sir, directed by Megan Doneman tells the story of Kiran Bedi, the first woman to join the Indian Police Service, former head of Tihar Jail, Asia's largest, and notoriously corrupt and overcrowded prison, and latterly resident at the UN in New York.

"Kiran Bedi is arguably India's most controversial daughter, both revered by her supporters and reviled as a self-centred publicity seeker by her critics. In this captivating examination of her life, Australian documentarian Megan Doneman shows that whatever people may think of Bedi personally, there is no disputing her professional achievements. "

We'll try and catch one or two during the festival, but anyone that has seen these or who has more details, do drop us a comment. And if you're not in Toronto, keep an eye open for local release announcements ... and fof course or other new films that might be of interest. We're always keen to hear about new movies to feature. But let us know who you're being sponsored by first!!

Fat chance for CSR

Regular readers of the Crane and Matten blog will be aware of our ongoing interests in social responsibility and self regulation in the food industry. Few subjects arouse as much debate as the stuff we put on our plates every day, the things that make us fat or thin, healthy or unhealthy … and of course the role that corporations play in enabling or preventing us from making informed and sustainable choices about food consumption.

So it is with some interest that we can report that this week saw the introduction of the first bill in the US that requires food outlets to display the calorie contents of their products on menus (see the recent newspaper article in The Guardian about this for more details). Yes, New York City has defied the vigorous campaigning of the fast food industry to put in place regulations that will ensure that customers in the city will no longer have to scrabble through the desultory rack of in-store nutrition leaflets or wade through the games and promotions on the corporate website in order to work out just how many calories that bucket of fried chicken and fries is going to pack.

Regulation of course is somewhat anathema to some (but not necessarily all) in the CSR world. Proponents of social responsibility typically promote self-regulation by business as a preferable alternative to government-imposed legislation. But in the hard fought battle of the bulge in New York, the city’s restaurant chains have been reluctant to introduce more far reaching CSR initiatives that may have staved off today’s regulation.

So from our perspective, the new legislation represents something of a mixed blessing. Sure, customers should be able to make informed decisions on the basis of readily available, easily comparable, and ultimately relevant, information about their prospective purchases at the point of sale. The New York legislation clearly has the potential to deliver this, providing restaurant chains live up to the spirit as well as the letter of the law. And, most importantly, such information is critical to the enabling of what we discuss under the label of ‘consumer sovereignty’ in our business ethics text. Basically, as the INSEAD professor Craig Smith has shown, the point is that ethical exchanges require consumers to have appropriate capability, information and choice in making their purchase decisions.

But, on the other hand, the New York regulations also, to some extent, a represent a failure on the part of the food industry’s CSR movement to get ahead of the game and work through a suitable industry-led alternative. Nutrition leaflets and website data are all well and good, but they hardly represent a creative and sustainable response to the health issues facing a society in the midst of a rapidly escalating obesity problem. McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut and the rest of the usual suspects have been talking the talk well enough, but in the end this wasn’t enough, at least not in New York.

Of course, the interesting question now is what will happen elsewhere, whether in other US states or further afield. Will the New York regulations act as a spur for more states or even countries to legislate? Will the food chains get their act together and instigate more responsible labeling programmes? Will we see new operators entering as-yet unregulated markets with information-led, nutrition-oriented value propositions, just as we have in the packaged food sector? Or, will all the fuss die down leaving fast food corporations free to scupper the new regulations before they have a chance to seriously take hold? The writing is on the wall, for sure. The only problem is, it’s just a little hard to read.

I'd like to teach the world to .... eat?!

Probably the title of this post is lost on some of our younger readers, but it refers to a classic ad by Coca-Cola, where a multicultural bunch of young people with bad haircuts (well, it was the 70s) sing about peace, love and understanding in the guise of selling more soda, all to the tune of "I'd like to teach the world to sing". Beautiful. I don't know about you, but it gives Crane and Matten an urge to go grab a couple of cold ones from the cafe here just thinking about how much our friends at Coke have contributed to racial understanding and that great one-world vibe. Well, not counting the record breaking court fine for racial descrimination in 2000, their problems with water use in India ... oh and the fact that here we have a Pepsi-only exclusive concession!

But anyway, we digress. The point of the post is not actually to talk about Coca Cola, but about one of the other great giants of American global branding - McDonald's. Anyone that has read our Business Ethics textbook will know that we always like to see what's going on in the world of Ronald McDonald - there is always a meaty story or two to get our teeth into (if you'll excuse the pun). This time round, we are curious to explore what exactly it is that McDonald's hopes to teach the world. Probably not, as in the Coke ad, to teach the world to sing, but one thing is for certain, everyone's favourite fast food company is not content to leave the teaching to mere teachers.

First up, from this side of the Atlantic, news that McDonald's is pulling its ill-fated sponsorship of elementary school report cards in Florida (thanks to Ryan for pointing that one out to us). Yes, that's right, McDonald's was giving away happy meals as a reward for good grades, complete with a beaming picture of Ronald McDonald holding up the golden arches on the report card envelope. You couldn't make this stuff up. Critics rightly questioned whether McDonald's was sidestepping its own pledge not to advertise in elementary schools, whilst the firm countered that this was "not advertising". Oh, right, well that's OK then.

Only last week, we blogged about some of the issues around food companies self regulating their marketing to children, and this looks like a particuarly good example of where a stronger system is necessary to prevent companies breaking their own rules. As it turns out, the issue caused such a stink that the initiative was quickly dropped by McDonald's, who probably couldn't believe all the fuss since they had just taken over from Pizza Hut who had a similar promotion on report-card jackets for about 10 years. Perhaps the real question is how Pizza Hut managed to get away with it so long, but that's another story.

Not content with providing "incentives" to American kids for getting A's, from the other side of the Atlantic comes news that McDonald's is going to be offering high school qualifications to its staff in the UK. With the British Government looking to provide more practically oriented qualifications, as well as hoping to leverage some of the massive investment in company training into nationally recognized skills awards, McDonald's is one of three UK companies slated to run pilot programmes that will result in A' level qualifications for eligible staff.

Given that even the British Prime Minister himself, Gordon Brown, has said that the McDonald's A' level will be a "tough course", we clearly should have nothing to worry about. After all, he expects them to be ultimately suitable for entry into university. But even though we don't have a problem at all with complementing school education with practical training, there are clearly dangers here in equating a rather narrow company specific training course - however good it may be - with a decent high school education. Corporations quite naturally train people to work in the company's best interests, and unless students are also given the tools to put this training into a wider context, there is not much prospect for developing well rounded educated individuals. It is not that a McDonald's training scheme couldn't be part of this, but it would need to be effectively and imaginatively embedded into the curriculum to ensure that students are not short-changed by a government simply contracting out the educational process to "socially responsible" corporations. Maybe they should offer some free happy meals to anyone who makes a good suggestion for how to do this....

CSR or regulation for food advertising?

CSR is often seen as a way of forestalling legislation, or of replacing hard government regulation with softer self-regulation from industry. In the UK, where governments since the 1980s have tended to champion CSR, comes news of another victory for self-regulation over mandatory restrictions, this time in the area of food advertising.


In the wake of increasing concerns over childhood obesity, and a general dismay over the junk that makes up many children's diets today (cynics will say that all British people eat crap food, but one half of Crane and Matten at least tends to deny that), fast food companies and soft drinks multinationals have been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism.


So expectation was high that a new "obesity strategy" about to be launched by the UK Government would impose tighter restrictions on advertising of junk food. This follows a self-regulatory code launched by the soft drinks industry a couple of years ago, and new TV advertising restrictions from the communications regulator Ofcom last year that banned advertising of unhealthy food during kids programs. Health campaigners were anticipating an announcement that would extend these restrictions yet further.


According to the UK newspaper, The Guardian, though, the plans have been put on ice in favour of a more "collaborative approach" between government and industry. By this, we suppose, we can expect more CSR style self-regulation. What remains to be seen however is what form it will take.

One promising route would be something along the lines of the Europe wide voluntary initiative introduced by Coca-Cola and friends in 2006 that commited members of the Union of European Beverages Associations (Unesda), to ban advertising to children under 12, to no longer install vending machines in primary schools, and to supply machines in secondary schools with healthier products.

The initiative's first independent monitoring report, by PriceWaterhouseCoopers is now available on-line. This shows that some progress has certainly been made, especially in terms of direct advertising, whilst the vending machines issue still requires some greater effort to reach compliance.

OK, so the initiative is voluntary and there are no fines for non-compliance, but for a CSR programme it probably should be appauded - after all, it sets out measureable targets, establishes independent monitoring, and commits to publish them where we can all take a look and see how they're doing.

So if the UK government does go down the CSR route to further self-regulation in food advertising to children, it will certainly be a blow to the advocates of good old fashioned regulation as a means of keeping the big corporations on the right track. But let's hope that if that is the case, they at least use - and let's be optimistic here, maybe even improve upon - the models that are already being introduced into the industry. True, on their own, they're not going to stop anyone getting fat, but the less scope corporations have to simply shrug their shoulders and say "it's not our problem", the better.