Watch the following Ted-Ed video The Burger Murders by George Siedel and Christine Ladwig (2020) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8O131s31Rg (Links to an external site.) At 1:02, Siedel and Ladwig claim that the company you run has three choices: 1) do nothing, 2) pull the product and destroy them in the area affected, or 3) pull the product worldwide. Remember that the deaths resulting from the poison burgers are now headline news and profits are tumbling. Which of the three solutions is the best solution? In considering your answer, consider the kind or moral reasoning you would apply. Are you going to apply a utilitarian reasoning (what does the most good for the most people) or deontology (lying is never good, so one should never lie)? Are you going to apply moral egoism (what’s good for the company) or moral altruism (what’s good for society)? Consider the consequences of your choice to your stakeholders—employees, investors, and customers—in addition to the long-term and short-term affects. Be sure to explain your reasoning in detail. At 3:19, Siedel and Ladwig offer the viewer three tests: the family test, the newspaper test, and the mentor test. Examine your decision regarding your company’s poisoned burgers. Apply all three tests to your decision. How would you feel: Explaining your decision to your a)family b)Seeing your decision on the front page of the newspaper or posted everywhere online If someone you respected made the same decision Do either of these tests make you second-guess your initial decision? Explain why or why not. According to the USDA “Food Waste FAQs” (https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs (Links to an external site.)), it is estimated that Americans waste between 30%–40% of the food they produce. According to Siedel and Ladwig, Johnson & Johnson’s CEO James Burke saved the company by recalling and destroying millions of bottles of Tylenol even though only three tested positive for cyanide poisoning. If your company did the same with possibly poisoned burger meat, you would be wasting thousands of pounds of meat and contributing to food waste in a massive way. Siedel and Ladwig’s example only provides three solutions: destroy none of the meat, destroy some of the meat, and destroy all of the meat. What are some solutions that Siedel and Ladwig do not consider? How do those solutions better solve the problem?
