Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: ConAgra

Showing posts with label ConAgra. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Strategic CSR - GMOs

The article in the url below details an ironic situation. In last November’s election in the U.S., there was a ballot initiative in California (Proposition 37) that was designed to force food companies to disclose any GMO ingredients in a product on the product’s label. Food companies are not currently required to do this anywhere in the U.S.—unfortunately, the issue is a low priority for many consumers, and that was not promising to change any time soon in a country where it is estimated that “75 percent of grocery products contain a genetically modified ingredient.”

In an effort to defeat Prop 37, corporations spent “more than $40 million” on lobbying and advertising during the election campaign and, as a result, the proposition failed to win a majority of votes. Another victory for the corporate lobby, right? Except that it did not work out that way:

“Instead of quelling the demand for labeling, the defeat of the California measure has spawned a ballot initiative in Washington State and legislative proposals in Connecticut, Vermont, New Mexico and Missouri, and a swelling consumer boycott of some organic or ‘natural’ brands owned by major food companies. … [today, there are] roughly 20 states considering labeling requirements.”

Ultimately, the actions taken by the food companies converted a local issue that no one was paying attention to into a national issue that is being hotly-debated:

“‘They spent a lot of money, got a lot of bad press that propelled the issue into the national debate and alienated some of their customer base, as well as raising issues with some trading partners,’ said Mr. Benbrook, who does work on sustainable agriculture.”

Now, forced to backtrack, the companies have joined the discussion with a wide-range of stakeholders to work out a more effective solution:

“Executives from PepsiCo, ConAgra and about 20 other major food companies, as well as Wal-Mart and advocacy groups that favor labeling, attended a meeting in January in Washington convened by the Meridian Institute, which organizes discussions of major issues.”

A strategic CSR perspective would have got them to this place a lot sooner and saved them $40 million in the process.

Take care

David

Bill Werther & David Chandler

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Stakeholders in a Global Environment (2e)

http://www.sagepub.com/strategiccsr2e/

Instructor Teaching Site: http://www.sagepub.com/strategiccsr/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: http://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/

Companies Weigh Federal Labels for Gene-Engineered Ingredients

By Stephanie Strom

February 1, 2013

The New York Times

Late Edition – Final

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/01/business/food-companies-meet-to-weigh-federal-label-for-gene-engineered-ingredients.html

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Strategic CSR - Organic food

This will be the last CSR Newsletter of the Fall semester.

Have a great holiday season and I will see you in 2013!

The article in the url below charts the evolution of the organic food industry in the U.S. from the perspective of one of its founders—Michael Potter, founder of Eden Foods (http://www.edenfoods.com/). The article reports that, in many respects, the terms “organic” and “big food” are becoming synonymous:

“The fact is, organic food has become a wildly lucrative business for Big Food and a premium-price-means-premium-profit section of the grocery store. The industry’s image — contented cows grazing on the green hills of family-owned farms — is mostly pure fantasy. Or rather, pure marketing. Big Food, it turns out, has spawned what might be called Big Organic.”

Many of the small and local brands, which many consumers probably believe remain ‘small and local,’ are now ‘big and remote’:

“Bear Naked, Wholesome & Hearty, Kashi: all three and more actually belong to the cereals giant Kellogg. Naked Juice? That would be PepsiCo of Pepsi and Fritos fame. And behind the pastoral-sounding Walnut Acres, Health Valley and Spectrum Organics is none other than Hain Celestial, once affiliated with Heinz, the grand old name in ketchup. Over the last decade, since federal organic standards have come to the fore, giant agri-food corporations like these and others — Coca-Cola, Cargill, ConAgra, General Mills, Kraft and M&M Mars among them — have gobbled up most of the nation’s organic food industry. Pure, locally produced ingredients from small family farms? Not so much anymore.”

The result of all this consolidation and commercial interest, according to Potter, is the dilution of the meaning associated with the organic label and all the health benefits that he believes stem from good, wholesome food. One example of how the influence of agri-business is affecting the final product is in the compilation of the National Organic Standards Board (http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/NOSB) (increasingly corporate) and the Board’s list of what substances can be included in organic foods and still continue to call the final product ‘organic’ (increasingly long):

“As corporate membership on the board has increased, so, too, has the number of nonorganic materials approved for organic foods on what is called the National List. At first, the list was largely made up of things like baking soda, which is nonorganic but essential to making things like organic bread. Today, more than 250 nonorganic substances are on the list, up from 77 in 2002.”