While I was reading other COMM 101 students’ blogs, Minqi’s topic of Sanlu Milk event in China interested me, as I had paid close attention to this event since I was back in China. As mentioned in her blog, the poisonous milk has caused a substantial amount of infants sick or even worse, for during the process of producing milk, there were detrimental chemicals called melamine being added into the powder so that the percentage of protein in the milk would increase. In this case the producing cost would decrease and this is the “tricky” way for the company to get more profit. Minqi concluded the issue as the lack of business ethics of Sanlu Company. Indeed, as we learned in class, business ethics is one of the basic principles of starting a company and bring it to market. Here I would like to analyze the event from the perspective of consumers.

Personally I believe the foundation of market economy is trust. Consumers choose to buy products based on their assumption of trust of the product. However if producers and operators of an industry lose the basic integrity, just like what Sanlu Company did, how can consumers expect that they would pay for the quality problems or to be responsible for the health of others. For Sanlu Company, it will take a long time to re-establish their brand, reputation and market credibility, and sometimes there would be no good result. Therefore by combining my views and Minqi’s, lack of business ethics has a direct impact on a company’s long-term development.

Reference

Minqi Pei’s Blog – Sanlu Milk Powder Event: https://blogs.ubc.ca/maggie123/

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