Business, Society and Ethics - Case Study Example

Business, Society and Ethics Name Institution Lecturer Date Decisions have been made in organizations, some controversial while some are just easily acceptable. In making decisions which are likely to cut across the stakeholders, the management of a company must ensure the outcome from such decisions would have no negative effects, lest the company faces unprecedented lawsuits which in most cases turn out to be very costly. Since decisions vary in magnitude of their effects, decisions which are likely to have health effects on the stakeholders should be considered very carefully before they can be implemented. These decisions which have negative health effects to either humans or animals, or even plants sometimes end up with fatality. Such is a fate that befell the manufacture of Posilac, a veterinary product manufactured by Monsanto which was meant to increase milk production in dairy cattle in the United States. The manufacture of this product followed the normal process that any newly discovered product would undergo before it would be approved for manufacture and release into the market. What is not clear is whether this product underwent any tests since the moment it was released into the market for use by dairy cattle farmers, serious issues were raised about this product. This product was found to cause unnecessary pain, suffering and distress to the cattle. Despite all these grave concerns, Monsanto were still very apologetic and continued to conduct thorough advertisement for the product, turning a deaf ear to the customers. They engaged in a game of deceit which led to many cattle suffering mastitis, udder disease which renders cow milk unfit for human consumption. Monsanto had so much focus on the profit they would get from the sale of this product that they did not act on these concerns. By the time they were recalling this product, so much damage had been done that the company ended up incurring a lot of expenses settling disputes out of court. The situation got worse for Monsanto when the United States invaded Vietnam with the product which ended up causing so many birth defects. The affected individuals resorted to filing suits against Monsanto, which led to the company paying over eighty million dollars in compensation. Worse still, Monsanto never admitted guilt. This scenario is just a case in so many that go on in the corporate world. Companies have always engaged inpeddling false information to the consumer and failing to own up to the outcome of their actions. The use of this product led to increased suffering to cattle, which led to the production of milk with pus. Such is milk which cannot be consumed by humans. The use of Posilac by cattle farmers led to the overreliance of the cattle on the drug, in which condition the withdrawal led to pronounced negative effects on the cattle and even death. Once an animal was suffering from the side effects of this drug, it was necessary to administer antibiotics to counter these side effects. This led to increased administration of antibiotics to cattle. Traces of these antibiotics would eventually find their way into the milk. Consumption of such milk led to development of resistance to antibiotics by the consumers. These negative effects were contrary to the intended function the drug was meant to fulfil. With the ambitious aim of increasing milk production in cattle, this drug was first applauded for its effectiveness in making a cow continue producing milk way after weaning. It however made the cow produce more milk beyond the natural capacity of the cow, causing physiological effects which would eventually lead to the death of the cow. Monsanto had however put an endless list of undesirable effects of this drug on the package. Despite all these, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) went ahead and authorized the release of this drug into the market. This was considered to be a major case of irresponsibility on their side. The management of Monsanto should bear all the blame emanating from the use of the drug. The company had its own group of livestock on which it conducted studies on the drug before they could give the green light for the large scale manufacture of the drug. From such studies, the company had the opportunity of making the drug better by minimizing the side-effects of the drug. However, the company chose to ignore all these glaring limitations and decided to introduce the drug into the market. This is a self-centered approach because the administration was focused more on maximizing their profit at the expense of the health of their consumers. This is a culture of greed, materialism and exploitation. Many organizations fit in this bracket, possessed with the greed for profit, obsession with the desire to accumulate material wealth, exploiting their customers in order to fulfil their ambition. It has always been the culture of large organization to put economic interests first. This is however not a good culture since companies like Monsanto capitalize on this to exploit unsuspecting consumers. This in some cases work against the organization owing to the large amounts of money that the company ends up parting with in the form of fines and out of court settlements. It would be more advisable if companies like Monsanto would put the interest of their consumers first so as to live up to the ever elusive ethical behavior. The Food and Drugs Administration also had the opportunity of blocking the product from entering the market. The authority, either out of ignorance or out of choice decided to give Monsanto the go ahead to introduce the product into the market. It is notable that the will of large organizations is for regulating bodies such as the FDA to have more power so that they would come up with policies that favor the large organizations. This might have played a critical role on the product seeing the light of the day. FDA acted on sheer bias since they were aware of the negative effects that Posilac would have on the cattle and by extension on human beings.Even without conducting their own tests, FDA could have relied on the information appearing on the package of the product to make a judgment of whether or not they would have allowed the production and sale of the product to proceed. From all these occurrences, Monsanto should have acted on proper ethics and stop the production of Posilac to save farmers from the anguish they went through by using the product. The company would have taken the welfare of the customers seriously instead of focusing much on the profit they would make from the sale of the product. If stopping the production of the product would have not been cost friendly, Monsanto would have solicited for better methods of reproducing the product without the dire effects on human beings. On the other hand, they would have given guidance to the farmers on proper use of the product. The company did not even own up to the damage the drug had caused many dairy cattle farmers. The irresponsibility of Monsanto is not unique to it but witnessed across the major corporates in the world. Different people would view the morality of this incident by Monsanto in different ways. The judgment of such an incident is based on objective reasoning. Moral decisions normally involve a balance between two competing alternatives. In the case of Monsanto, it was a competition between the urge to make profit and the welfare of the customers. The gravity of the decision taken by Monsanto will be subjective and is bound to vary among different people. This is not the same as it would be in religious morality where something is unacceptable simply because the bible or religious leaders forbid it. References Sheldon .W, et al. Ethics in the Workplace: A Framework for Moral Judgment, 2011. http://www.ilo.org/oshenc/part-iii/ethical-issues/item/332-ethics-in-the-workplace-a-framework-for-moral-judgement. Accessed: June 14, 2014. Combat Monsanto. Monsanto Products, 2011. http://www.combat-monsanto.co.uk/spip.php?article233. Accessed: June 14, 2014. Alphalink. Humanism and Morality, 1998. http://home.alphalink.com.au/~jperkins/humoral.htm. Accessed: June 14, 2014. Resnik, David B.The Ethics of Science: An Introduction. Routledge, New York 1998. Fox R M, & J P DeMarco. Moral Reasoning Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Chicago, 1990 Read More