Ethicality of Husi Food Company Limited

Ethicality of Husi Food Company Limited

 Recently there are many articles and news discussing about the marketing performance of some famous corporations. It seems that great importance has been attached to the ethicality of a company’s marketing activities. Profit maximization is always the main purpose for the businessman and the corporation as a whole. Nevertheless, the stewards of society should aware the ethicality of their commercial activities as the whole society will be affected by their practices. The purpose of this essay is to examine the ethicality of a catering company called Husi Food Company Limited by referring to the AMA code of ethics. A brief introduction of company background, the problems of the issue and the application of AMA code of ethics will be discussed in this paper.

 Husi Food Company Limited is an American-owned food supplier OSI group. It was responsible for offering food materials such as lettuce, pork, beef and pork to the multi-national fast food chains such as McDonalds and KFC. However, a Shanghai-based meat supplier has been discovered by a local Chinese television station that expired meats are sold to Chinese branches of American fast-food chains. According to the local media, the meat materials supplied consists of both fresh and out-of-date meats. On the basis of AMA code of ethics, marketers must embrace honesty in their transaction and also take responsibility for their activities. Nevertheless, those practices taken by Husi violate these two important ethical values. Therefore, Husi was under investigation for unethical practices.

 In order to comply with honesty, the firms need to be forthright in dealings with customers and stakeholders and strive to be truthful in all situations and at all times. Nevertheless, Husi’s practices did not comply with this requirement. According to Sophie(2014), the shelf life of over 4300 package of smoked beef patties was extended without any reasonable grounds. This caused a huge negative influence to the popular fast-food shops. Since both McDonald’s and Yum Brands Inc - owner of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell has over 6,200 Chinese branches collectively, and the expired meat materials supplied by Husi are the essential ingredients for most of their foodstuffs, the problematic food produced caused a public health issue in the society. Although they had immediately stopped getting the supply from Husi when they noticed this unethical practice, the losses and harmful impacts caused cannot be recovered. In this case, Husi kept on selling the out-to-date meat materials to the popular fast-food chain and caused a public health issue. It is no doubt that Husi had violated the concept of honesty in AMA code of ethics and also the government laws and regulations.

 In the aspect of responsibility, AMA code of ethics stated that corporations should accept the consequences of their marketing decisions and activities. In addition, it is the responsibility of the firms to acknowledge the social obligations to stakeholders.
In this case, the responsibility of Husi should be ensuring the meat materials are produced under a safety and hygienic process. However, with the evidences provided by a TV report, the factory workers of Husi kept on using the meats which had fallen off the floor in the production. Furthermore, they mixed up the defective chicken with the fresh-produced chicken in order to get away from the reveal by others. In addition to sanitation, KFC had complained that the chicken sold to them was pumped of excessive antibiotics and growth hormones, which would cause mental health problems to the health of the consumers. From the practices that have done by Husi, it was obvious that Husi did not take the food safety as a big and necessary concern for food production and supply. Therefore, it can be concluded that Husi did not take the responsibility of ensuring the food safety and sanitation when they adopted their marketing decision and activities. This violates the principle of ethical responsibility.