Showing posts with label corporate responsibility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corporate responsibility. Show all posts

Thursday, January 29, 2009

“Uh Oh, Lawsuit Time”

The title of this post is the entire text posted by a frequent commenter to FortBendNow. I used it because it is particularly snarky and indicative of the incredibly insensitive nature of those of the far right – of which the commenter is a fine example.

The FortBendNow story, a story that is also making national news, is about the outbreak of Salmonella poisoning over the past 2 years, an outbreak that resulted in over 500 known poisoning cases (known, because who knows how many got sick and simply suffered through it for a day) and directly responsible for eight deaths.

The commenter dryly notes that all of these people, and I assume the surviving relatives of the eight who were killed, will probably want to make some dirty lucre over this by filing big ticket lawsuits against the corporations that caused the outbreak.

Possibly the commenter didn’t get it, or read past the part about how the Georgia-based peanut product food processor detected Salmonella in its own products, but sealed and distributed these tainted products anyway. At least I hope that is the case.

They did this for 2 reasons you know.

They did this because their actuaries probably did a statistical cost analysis and calculated that it would cost the company more to destroy the tainted lots than it would to settle all of the lawsuits that would be filed as a result of becoming sickened – or dying – from consumption of the products.

They did this because the federal agency that is supposed to be watching over these self-interested corporations, the Food and Drug Administration, an agency that is supposed to protecti American citizens from being harmed by their own country’s corporate entities, has been asleep at the wheel for the past eight years.

The pro-business anti-consumer Bush regime had a bad habit of having its watchdog groups simply look the other way when there was a violation of the law.

The end result is just this: there is no accountability any more. There is a complete absence of corporate responsibility today.

The attitude or lack of one, apparently shared by this right wing fanatic.

Should Peanut Corporation of America be sued by any and all persons who were sickened by the corporation’s callous disregard for the health of its customers.

Be sued by the survivors and heirs of the eight souls whose lives were ended with such indifference?

I’ll go this nimrod one better. Should there be state and federal criminal investigations launched to find, try, and punish those who made the decisions to release the tainted food that ended human life? Try them for the crime of murder?

Is the President black?