They'll do exactly as much damage as they can get away with. If there's no regulation standing in their way, or the potential profits outweigh the consequences, <i>of course</i> they'll continue their malfeasance. I don't know why this is surprising to anyone. The nature of any corporation is to act in its own self-interest. I guess Mighty Earth is doing what they can, but it's like raking leaves in the forest, in the middle of a raging wildfire. The only way that anything is going to change is through effective regulation and credible enforcement. Trying to wheedle and cajole Cargill into growing a conscience is a manifest exercise in futility.
Totally distracting aside: I've always felt I wish I could walk around a store with a special set of glasses on so I could apply my own personal voting filters -
Chili - benefits monsanto $0.05 per can, KRAFT Foods $1 per can<p>etc...<p>I mean I have a lot of values - I buy small label organics and that does a lot, but sometimes I just want to buy cheetos- I think I would think twice if I knew my enemies were benefitting.<p>Honestly I thought that was one of the purposes of something like G-Glass.<p>Anyway - but yeah, these companies exist because even if we know they are bad - we have no way of knowing what we are buying that is making them stay in power.<p>Money is our voting power - and unlike presidential elections, we generally have no idea what we're voting for.
So, this may sound awkward but I'm going to say it anyway: this is what globalization enables. The very fact of sourcing things as elemental as the food you eat, from the other side of the planet (whichever side has the laxest environmental, health, and safety rules), makes this easier. It is easier to live far away from the things your company does, and the people it does them to, if they're on a different continent than you. Moreover, by its very nature globalization enables regulatory arbitrage, so you can live in a country with relatively good EHS rules, and produce in a country with bad or no EHS rules.<p>There is a tradeoff between producing wealth, and trashing your environment, and I don't judge too harshly the people who want to worry about carcinogens later, once they've got enough to eat that they won't starve to death. But that tradeoff used to happen within each country. When it was poor, the production was low, and as their ability to wreck their environment scaled up, so did their wealth to afford not to.<p>Only globalization allows companies like this to descend with 1st World money on places with 3rd world EHS rules. Cargill and its ilk exist, because we changed the rules to make it easier for them to do this.
Brought to you by the Louis Dreyfus company, Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto, Bunge, Callebaut, Glencore, Armajaro and so on...<p>There's a great book "Merchants of Grain" written in the 70s about the secretive foods megabusinesses. It's arguably gotten worse since then. They make oil companies look like public servants.
If you're actually interested in <i>reading</i> this report as opposed to struggling through the web presentation, this is the link to the PDF:<p><a href="http://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/Mighty-Earth-Report-Cargill-The-Worst-Company-in-the-World-July-2019.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/Mighty-Earth-R...</a><p>This piece did inadvertently introduce me to Shorthand, which tells me that "the world's most successful digital storytelling teams" are using it to "create simply beautiful stories using" Shorthand's "beautifully simple" story editor. I can only wonder how much more successful those teams could be if they would beautifully, simply stop.
Does anybody else get a Bernie Sanders type of feeling from this? A throwback to older issues and older battles, not seen since the 90s? It's refreshing to see that someone still cares about the rainforests, but I don't know if it's going to stick. The energy of the environmental movement is now elsewhere; at the cosmic scale, in the fight against climate change; at the scale of smaller, practical changes, it's in things like banning plastic straws.
If you want to know more about the five grain companies read the book Merchants of Grain. All five have very sharp elbows and only one (Bunge) is public so a lot of the wrangling goes on in private. Cargill is the largest of all of them.
Just want to point out that I'm a Midwesterner and the line "drank their polluted water" is neither factual nor representative of me or any of my family or friends. There are a valid points you point out but please exclude hyperbole in your arguments.
> In contrast to the oil and tobacco industries, for instance, the bad practices documented here are not inherent to the products Cargill sells, and are, in fact, entirely avoidable.<p>On the contrary, there are strong philosophical arguments that selling meat and eggs, as Cargill does, is 'inherently' immoral.
Seriously? Worst company in the world? Come on. They’re responding to demand. If Cargill doesn’t buy the palm oil, another importer/distributor will. Sure, educate customers regarding the impacts of their purchases, but “worst company in the world” is just trolling. It’s this kind of partisan over-the-top hyperbole that turns people off and, IMHO, gets dudes like Trump elected.
The basis for this claim seems to hinge on the facts that Cargill is a) big and b) privately owned, both of which are sins in today's political orthodoxy.<p>As a Minnesotan, I was wondering how long it would take before someone would notice them and shift their attention from Koch, but it had to happen at some point.