Aldi, a global supermarket with over 9000 stores in the world, has confirmed there is a 30% to 100% addition of horse meat in beef products. Aldi says the French supplier Comigel is the one to blame yet Comigel shifts the blame to its supplier Spanghero for supplying them horse meat as suppose to beef. Other than the dispute about which is the one to blame, there is also a hygiene issue for the affected beef that the beef potentially contains phenylbutazone which can cause a serious blood disorder. Cecilia comments on the business ethic that is involved in this event. She thinks Aldi’s dishonesty to its costumers and the denial of responsibility exerts a significant negative impact on the company’s reputation.
From my point of view, I think all the companies in this event are responsible for supplying affected beef and their denial of responsibility doesn’t help in redeeming their reputation. According to Freeman’s stakeholder theory, manager has the responsibility to figure out how the interests of all the stakeholders, the company, costumers, suppliers and community, come together. In this affected beef case, all of the companies violate the business ethics by insulting companies and costumers’ interests. Even though mixing beef with horse meat can lower the costs, but the trust between costumers and company as well as between companies are completely destroyed. Costumers feel betrayed by risking their life buying beef product that can serious health issue while companies will choose other suppliers. As a result of that, all these companies will suffer significant financial and trust crisis.