In 2008, Sanlu-China was reported for adding Melamine in their products. Melamine, a chemical material used to manufacture plastic, can causes renal and urinary problems to people. However, adding Melamine makes milk products appear to have more protein and Melamine is cheap. For this reason, Sanlu-China used Melamine to cheat through the protein test and it even tried to cover up the event by bribing the government.
Consequently, such unethical action destroyed Sanlu-China’s brand among customers and the company went broke soon after. Not only that, Sanlu-China-as the video pointed out-also damaged the reputation of Chinese dairy industry.
Sanlu-China exemplifies the importance of ethic. Sacrificing ethic for profit eventually leads to a bigger loss. Brand is the biggest asset of a company. Companies sale products by building brands among consumers. Ethic is an important part of brand. If a company’s ethic corrupt, its brand will deteriorate and so does its profit. Thus, unethical behaviors might have short-term profit, but in long term, they bring deadly consequence which, in Sanlu-China’s case, was bankruptcy. And you can not cover up unethical actions, as Lincoln said “you cannot fool all the people all the time.”