Product safety

There are many people start to concern about food and health in their life. Today, people realize that eat well and live well is very important in order to enjoy a healthy life. Healthy life is able to lead us to a stronger body and live happily. Therefore, people will start to prefer healthy food for their family and government also encourage that people have to make appointment for body check once in a year. Therefore, people can comprehend their state of health and start to eat healthy food. Meanwhile, the healthy food demands were increasing in the market so businessmen have to increase their product of produce as well as supply to fulfill customer needs. In fact, businessmen also utilize this advantage to increase their sales and gain profit. For instance, people would like to buy more organic vegetables, fruits, chicken etc. To fulfill people demands while cutting the cost of productions, there are many businessmen started to act in unethical way to produce those products.

Unfortunately, those businessmen are failure their commitment to consumers. They are trying to add harmful ingredients in the product such as food additives, trans fat, artificial sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup, monosodium glutamate, common food dyes, sodium sulfite, sodium nitrate, butylated hydroxyanisole, butylated hydrozyttoluene, sulfur dioxide, potassium bromate etc. For example, sugar free chewing gum and coke light are actually containing artificial sweeteners but the product has been labeled as sugar free. Besides, margarine is containing trans-fat but the product labeled low fat. Therefore, these behaviors are considered as unethical because they are actually cheating consumers to gain the same profit with those ethical businessmen. In fact, those businessmen are not concern about their consumers’ health and do not even care their product safety as long as their profit is maximize while the cost is the minimum.

From the ScareCrow video we can see that there is a big company named “Crow Foods” which selling different types of product in different outlets such as chicken, beef and milk in the city. Those products are labeled in natural and 100% pure product and they are selling very well in the city. One of the scarecrows working life and his feelings has been screened out in the video. The scarecrow face was showing depressed while step into the company and the customers purchasing those “100% pure beef” products to consume. Other that than, an evil crow always give orders to the scarecrow by hitting him. Based on the video, the evil crow is ordering the scarecrow to repair the defectives. When the scarecrow is fixing the building, he saw that the so called “all natural” chicken is been given injections to grow more fat and increase the volume while the fresh milk that producing have been added chemical through the machine but not natural handmade squeezing. After a whole working day, the scarecrow is tired with all the guilty and depressed feeling because of what he has done today. Once he reached home, he saw his own plant then he decided to leave the company and run out from the worst feeling. In result, he opened a small business in selling food that is 100% natural and fresh. He also encourages people to have awareness in product safety by using a slogan which titled “Cultivate a Better World” and he lives happily.

This video has given an inspiration that product safety especially the food and health have to be concern on. Consumers have the rights to know about the product they are consuming. As we know that, in reality the crow is represent manager and the scarecrow is labor. I strongly disagree those unethical ways that the company implements because it is cheating customer to buy their product. Customers are expecting a better quality of product if they paying in higher price as customer always want to feel worth in using the product. Since customers are concerning their health so that they would like to comprehend the nutrition. However, the businessmen are trying to hide the fact and labeled those products is safety and quality guarantee. Thus, customers will refer to the label and read the information and nutritional value to choose the product like low fat and sugar free but they might not know the product will bring harm to them. Likewise, the labor is facing an ethics dilemma situation as he is struggling with himself that he wants to stay loyal with the company or telling truth.  Finally, the labor has make a decision whereby leaving the company and opened his own small business :)) (He has make a good decision because based on his perception he think that the company is doing the wrong thing but what he is doing now is right.)

Similarly, this video make me recall back to a news that related to this particular issues which is the suppliers have add chemical coloring to the chicken in order to fulfill the consumer needs “kampong chicken”.  The skin of “Kampong chicken” is rendered partially yellow or pale yellow in color due to the consumption of corn and also the food coloring in the feed. However, the original kampong chicken is never as beautiful yellow as those chickens which selling in the market. According to the news, someone declared that the chicken will not be that yellowish if the sellers follow the food coloring standard. In fact, the seller would like use the cheaper chickens and dye them by using yellow coloring powder that containing 6mg/kg Aniline that can replace the original kampong chicken. Actually, the Aniline is the chemical that can bring a side effect and harm people health after consumption.

http://news.sinchew.com.my/node/324593  (Here is the news that talking about the skin of kampong chicken is rendered partially yellow)

Of course, people who concern their health will actually choose the healthy food to consume. However, those businessmen always utilize our innocence to achieve their objectives whereby we do not know how actually all the food has been produced and whether the food that we consume is original or has been added any chemical or food additives. Hence, consumers give all the trust to supplier but they are using unethical way to blindfold us. I felt so disappointed because we are spending the money to take care our health but the seller behave unethically as they want to cut cost to gain maximum profit. This is really unfair that we could not get what we desired after we put effort but the sellers achieve what they want without putting any serious effort.

In conclusion, I think that if we are one part of any unethical company labor, we have to voice out the truth to let public aware about it because customers always have the right to know what they are consuming. On the same hand, as a healthy consumer we must know our consumer rights and always stick to our own stands.

LET US FIGHT AGAINST UNETHICAL FOOD COMPANY!!!

References

FOOD MATTERS. 2013. TOP 10 FOOD ADDITIVES TO AVOID. [online] Available at: http://foodmatters.tv/articles-1/top-10-food-additives-to-avoid [Accessed: 13 Oct 2013].