Food Inc Ethical Analysis

The primary goal of a for-profit business is to maximize profit, which can lead many business professionals down a dark road where one becomes obsessive and greedy to engage in questionable behavior to obtain more and more profit. In relation to the issues in the food industry of the United States, many corporations are taking advantage of their dominance in the industry. The movie Food Inc., portrays how the corporations of the food industry use their influence and power to revolutionize a system to maximize their profit with the ignorance of their cost on people, animals, and the environment. Even though the products and services that companies provide are a necessity for the survival of consumers, their actions can still become motivated …show more content…
involves how the dominant players of the food industry operate their business at the expense of others in order to maximize their profit due to their self-serving bias. From enforcing an inhumane mass factory production of their food, they are able to cut costs on production while increasing the size and amount of food produced to have more inventory to sell to consumers. Although cutting costs while being able to produce more is an excellent strategy from a business perspective, it is not ethical since the strategy involves inhumane treatment of animals. One could argue that the animals are going to be slaughtered anyway, but the inhumane treatment of these animals often cause outbreaks and development of bacteria since they are living in unsanitary conditions. The companies of the food industry’s self-serving bias allows them to view their business operations to best suit their interest of maximizing profit while ignoring their unethical choices to achieve their low- cost and efficient operations. Another way that they self-serving bias affects the decisions of these companies is through their inaction of making food safer for consumption and the secrecy of their production methods. Instead of reforming their way of processing food to make it safer and less prone to creating and spreading diseases, these companies still continue to operate in the same way, so they can keep their cheap, efficient production methods and not have to spend money on researching safer methods. Also, these corporations fight to hide information that consumers should be entitled to, such as the nutrition label and list of ingredients of the food, and make it near impossible for people to combat their unethical behavior since it is too costly to take them to court. Even though many have died from their products, the food industry’s corporation’s self-serving bias allows their greed for wealth to blind their social impact and duty to their consumers