Odwalla Organic Fruit Juice Case Study

1. There is a disconnect between Odwalla’s corporate social responsibility model and its actions. Odwalla’s motto of “soil to soul” metaphor stated that is used fresh organic fruit to nurture the body whole of its consumers. Odwalla produced organic fruit juice by using an acid-based rinsing process to killer bacteria instead of pasteurization because they believed it affected the taste of the juice. However, Odwalla’s actions were not socially responsible when they found out that the U.S. Army had rejected their proposal to sell juice because an uncommonly high level of bacteria was found in a sample and the risk of contamination was extraordinarily high, they rejected the head of quality assurance recommendation to add an additional layer …show more content…
There are many other ways in which the product could have been defective aside from manufacturing or design. One way a product could have been defective is from inadequate warning. Products that are safe may carry risk unknown to a customer therefore the law requires the product to carry warnings and instructions, without the warning it could cause defects. Another defect is improper packaging. If a product is packaged improperly and rendered to be dangerous the defect is asserted against the manufacturers of products. Lastly some products are unavoidable unsafe. They can be designed and manufactured correctly with the correct warning label but the product will still be …show more content…
Failing to comply with industry standards at the time of the contamination does constitute a breach of duty. A breach of duty means failure to include general obligations to act in a reasonable manner so as not to put another in harm’s way and special duties to certain parties including the duty to inspect and duty to warn of defects. When customers filed a negligence, lawsuits claiming that Odwalla had known that the acid-rinse method was ineffective and that scientific studies had shown that the method was effective in killing bacteria that cause E. coli only 8 percent of the time, Odwalla management team ignored its head of quality assurance’s warning about potential contamination sources in the factory. In this case Odwalla failed to comply with industry standards of keeping the factory safe and put consumers in harm’s way. This is a breach of duty because Odwalla did not act in a reasonable manner when given the facts. Another example of breach of duty is when Odwalla’s head of quality assurance told them to add an additional layer of contamination protection by employing a chlorine based wash after having the U.S. Army reject the sale of their juice because of the high risk of contamination, but the management team was too concerned with the taste. Odwalla had a breach of duty by not adding additional contamination protection which did breach the duty of producing a safe product for their