Sanlu, a popular state-owned Chinese diary products company, was caught adding Melamine to its baby milk powder in 2008, which led to the death of six babies and thousands’ of infants having kidney stone. The toxic chemical Melamine could make the milk powder appear to be more nutritious during the safety and component test. Consequently, Sanlu was ordered a bankrupcy and several of its top managers were sentenced to long prison terms.

Sanlu Company put its consumers’ lives aside in order to maximize its profits. Indeed, Sanlu used to be China’s oldest and most popular infant-formula brand. But it dug its own grave by deliberate neglecting its basic social responsibility, community and consumers. It’s not hard to tell the significance of business ethics. But is there a bottom line here that a company should never cross? Body Shop lied about its ingredient origins yet its market share was increasing. Major drug companies’ patents made developing countries suffer from high medical fees yet they gained enormous profits eventually. Why the public can stand with these unethical issues? What is the most basic ethic principle that a business must respect? Those are the questions we should be considering.