Food for Thought

David is the CEO of an international fast food restaurant chain. David struggles with the decision of whether he should sell food that contains genetically modified material and organisms (GMOs). He wants to ease customers’ concerns about GMO products in their food, but he also believes there is no harm in GMOs and that it is important to be supportive of research being done in this area. “As a business,” David says, “we have no ethical obligation to lead a fight for some social issue that’s beyond our competence... We’re not scientists and we’re not environmentalists... We’re business people.”

David is the CEO of an international fast-food restaurant chain. As CEO, one of his primary responsibilities is to grow the business. He also feels responsible to his numerous employees, to his customers, and to the shareholders. There are some lines that he absolutely will not cross, even though they may be legal and profitable. For example, David is adamant about the safety of his customers and employees and refuses to cut any corners in this regard.

However, when it comes to thinking about the issue of genetically modified material and organisms (GMOs), he sees things less clearly: 

“There’s a lot of controversy surrounding GMOs. I don’t know how much you have read about these genetically modified organisms. Well, the United States Government is saying it’s perfectly safe. The scientists I’ve read say it is a hundred percent safe. You can’t go to a grocery store in America and buy something that hasn’t got some genetically modified material. It goes into soybean crops and corn. So if I thought it were unsafe, I don’t know what I would do. Do I stop eating? But it’s safe. If it wasn’t safe, the government would stop it. But you have this enormous pressure because some customers are worried about the environmental impact [of the GMOs].

So what do you do, as a company in this particular area? … We’ve got a number of customers [and if they] … don’t want to buy something, then they should go find something else that they want to buy. So to me, it’s not an ethical issue. I happen to think there’s great power in some of the genetic work that’s being done, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world. This is going to really change the world as I’m reading it. And yet does that mean that I should sell genetically modified potatoes in [our restaurant]? Not if I have a choice. Why would I want to be in the middle of that controversy? We don’t have any equity in GMOs. We get nothing out of that. All we want to do is take care of our customers. So we’re in the middle of that one right at the moment. We don’t want to be, but it’s just part of being in the food business.

To me, philosophically, we’re just like you are. We go to the grocery store every day and buy groceries. But we buy a lot more of them. So they say we can influence the whole food chain. Well, the truth is, we can’t. It’s a lot bigger than we are. We’re big, but we’re not that big. So it’s hard to know exactly what we should do in a situation like that. It’s not an ethical issue per se. As a business, we have no ethical obligation to lead a fight for some social issue that’s beyond our competence—which I think this one is, clearly. We’re not scientists and we’re not environmentalists. We’re not even policymakers. We’re business people.

So as I reason my way through this, I don’t think we have a moral obligation to take a stand on this. We have to be guided by the government and the scientific community, to make sure that we put the safety of our customers first.”

David struggles with the decision of whether he should sell food that contains GMOs. Though he wants to keep his customers happy and ease their concerns about GMO products in the food they consume, he also believes there is no harm in GMOs and that it is important to be supportive of the research being done in this area.

What do you think David should do, and what are his obligations to his customers? Have you ever been faced with an issue (environmental, political, or otherwise) that motivated you to take a stand in your work?