Monthly Archives: September 2012

Hey guys, i hope everyone is having a good time.

General Motors recently recalled 40,859 cars because a plastic part in the car might crack and cause a fuel leak. The car models being recalled are Chevrolet Cobalt and the Pontiac G5 sedans from 2007  through 2009. The reason why they are recalling the cars is because in an incident of a fuel leak, the car would be ignited, thus poses a potential danger for its customers.

Although the act of recalling cars would directly harm General Motor’s brand image and reputation, i believe it is ethically right. Many dangers to people’s lives would be prevented from this course of action. I am however disappointed of the fact that General Motors only noticed the cracked parts recently, after 5 years since the car model was released.

On the bright side, General Motors announced that so far, there has been no incident reports on fire or injuries.

The article can be found here

Hello everyone,

You may or may not heard of the Chinese Milk Scandal that occurred in 2008.  The milk scandal was a food safety incident in China, involving milk and infant formula being adulterated by a chemical substance called Melamine. It appears that when melamine is added to milk, the protein content of milk increases. This blindly led people to purchase the tainted milk because the protein content of tainted milk was seemingly higher than normal, clean milk. The case is a strong example of using one’s knowledge, to exploit the money of the people.

As of November 2008, China reported an estimated 300,000 victims, with 6 infants dying from kidney failure, as well as an additional 860 babies hospitalized. The incident destroyed the people’s trust of its own national milk brand thus the Chinese government received countless criticism of its health and safety regulation of food products. Globally, other nations also decided to stop importing China’s dairy products. The Chief executive officers of the companies that produced tainted milk were executed, while 7 local government authorities as well as the director of inspection and quarantine were forced to resign.

                  “Chinese babies were hospitalized

                    as a result of the contamination”

In my opinion, it was very smart of the Chinese businessmen to taint their milk with melamine so that their milk products gain an advantage over their competitor’s product, which in this case – protein content, which directly translates a better quality product to the consumers. However, ethically speaking, i strongly believe it is wrong and immoral to sell products with dangers than the consumers are unaware of. The Chinese businessmen were dishonest about their products and definitely deserved to be punished. The incident was referred as one of the largest food safety events the World Health Organization had to deal with in recent years, and that the crisis of confidence among Chinese consumers would be hard to overcome.

Information of the Chinese Milk Scandal can be found here

Timeline of the Chinese Milk Scandal can be found here

“Stripped shelves in a Chinese supermarket”

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