Death by Greed

Most of us have heard or read how hundreds of people were sickened, and eight died, from a recent outbreak of salmonella. Recently the FDA reported that they had finally traced the source of the outbreak to a factory in Blakely, Georgia owned by Peanut Corporation of America. But while the peanut butter shipped by the factory was indeed contaminated with salmonella it wasn’t the ultimate source of what sickened and killed people. The ultimate source of their suffering and death was greed.

According to the Wall Street Journal the government has charged that the company’s own internal tests had found salmonella but that the company didn’t disclose their results and continued to ship the contaminated peanuts. Why didn’t the company report their internal findings? According to the article they didn’t because they weren’t required to.

Was this the result of corporate abuse of power? Not in this case. Headquartered in Lynchburg, Virginia, PCA is actually a privately owned company with approximately one-hundred to two-hundred and fifty employees. Their annual sales have ranged from $10 million to $25 million.

When one considers the seriousness of the charges along with the nature of the company we see a simple truth. An economic enterprise doesn’t have to be an investor-owned firm to be corrupted by greed.

What lesson might we learn for a future economic democracy out of this mess? As I see it the most important lesson is that in an economic democracy there would still be a need for government regulation. While cooperatively run enterprises tend to operate with a higher level of ethics people won’t become angels with the end of capitalism just as they weren’t angels in the modes of production that preceded it. So we can expect that there will still be a need for oversight by federal, state, and local authorities to insure safety for both consumers as well as workers.