Food, Inc. (movie review)

Chris MacDonald’s commentary appears originally and regularly on his blog The Business Ethics Blog, and is redistributed via 3BL Media with his expressed consent.

I finally saw Food, Inc. Frankly, I didn’t expect to like it much. I expected a one-sided, misleading anti-corporate tirade, along the lines of The Corporation. I was only partly correct. The main message really does seem to be that big companies are ruining everything, and that things would be better if we all just realized that we should be buying directly from the kindly farmer/sage down the road. But in spite of that slant, the movie does contain some useful stuff. So, my conclusion: a grudging endorsement. I think the film is flawed, but worth seeing.

First, I’ll note a couple of worthwhile take-away lessons, points that are made by the film and that seem well-justified.

Number one is that the meat industry is pretty disgusting. Most of the people who might be tempted to see Food, Inc. likely already knew that. But it’s a rotten industry. Injury rates for workers are high. Animals are treated badly. And quality control can be dodgy. The causes are pretty clear. Competition drives companies in all industries to cut corners in order to attract and keep customers. Sometimes that has undesirable effects. In the food industry, those effects can be pretty bad. Food, Inc. doesn’t tell us much that’s new, here, but it’s a useful reminder.

Number two: the corn subsidies in the U.S. are apparently insane. Those subsidies result in overproduction of corn (and hence of High-Fructose Corn Syrup). The result is that crappy food can be more affordable than nutritious food. Politically-powerful food companies like the subsidies (since they keep the price of ingredients down) so the food-buying public is likely to go on being subject to all the wrong incentives.

(For more on that topic, see the excellent 2007 documentary, King Corn.)

But in several ways the movie is less than satisfying.

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Business Ethics Blog: CSR is Not C-S-R

Regular readers will know that, over the last month, I’ve posted 3 blog entries critiquing the term “corporate social responsibility” (CSR). I’ve asked, rhetorically, whether the “C,” the “S,” and the “R” make sense. I’ve argued that, no, in each case the word those letters stand for fail to capture the range of issues devotees of “CSR” typically think are important. Basically, the conclusion is that “Corporate Social Responsibility” isn’t (just) about corporations, isn’t just about social questions, and isn’t just about responsibilities.

Now, this isn’t to say that there’s no topic at all that would suit the term “CSR.” If you really are just interested in corporations (and not other kinds of businesses), and if you really are just interested in their obligations (and find questions of rights, permissions, values, and virtues relatively uninteresting), and if you really are only interested in corporations’ outward-looking, specifically social obligations, well, then I guess you really are talking about CSR. But I suspect the number of people — and the number of companies — whose interests are that narrow is pretty small.

So, this all seems to imply:

• If you want companies to think carefully about the full range of normative (ethical) questions related to commerce, don’t ask them about CSR.
• If you want business students to be prepared for the decisions they’ll one day face as manager, don’t teach them courses in CSR.
• If you’re interested in learning a bit more about the ethical challenges faced by business, don’t read a book with “CSR” in the title.
• If your company wants to manage effectively the full range of ethical issues it’s likely to face, and not just one subset, don’t hire a “CSR” consultant.

Now, clearly I’m trying to be a bit provocative. You could have good reasons to do each of the things I’m warning against above. And many companies and consultants who use the term “CSR” use it, I’m sure, as a mere term of convenience, and are fully aware that it’s only a very rough label for the full range of ethical issues in business. But if you care about the topics I’ve covered in the last 3 blog entries on this topic, and if you happen to find yourself talking to a company or consultant (or professor) who’s excited about CSR, you might want to ask a few questions about what they mean by that.

This blog entry by Chris MacDonald appeared originally on The Business Ethics Blog.