Big Pharma, Salt and the Sustainability Blues

July 27, 2010

These sustainability and business issues have been in the news recently. But let’s take another look.

Corn Ethanol
Two months ago we wrote about coal. Among other things, we discussed the industry’s amazing ads for “clean� coal, a product that doesn’t presently exist. We speculated that these may have been among the most misleading ads ever. And, indeed, they did earn national awards from groups that identify and recognize outstanding performances in greenwashing. But, little did I imagine that the efforts of the coal people would be completely outdone in just a matter of months.

The person who is reasonably well developed spiritually will have long ago hurled a large stone through his or her television set. I confess to having not yet reached that level; I still stare numbly at mine all too often. I was recently doing just that when these lines appeared on the screen and jarred me back to consciousness: Ethanol has not shipped a single job overseas. No United States soldiers have been deployed to defend ethanol sources. No wars have ever been fought over ethanol. America’s Peace Fuel. I managed to catch the tag line. Growth Energy. From a reading of GrowthEnergy.org’s website, one might imagine that it is an emerging social movement rising up from the grassroots to solve our energy problems. It’s not. It’s the name of a campaign invented by the industrial agriculture companies with the objective of making corn ethanol subsidies more palatable to legislatures and the public.

According to the blogger Bioversivist, the campaign is budgeted at $2.5 million. Its immediate objective is to pick up an additional $30 billion in subsidies to increase the amount of ethanol blended into gasoline. And, if the campaign works really well, the government will build dedicated pipelines to each coast for them to facilitate exports of their product.

All of this is particularly obnoxious to someone interested in both sustainability and peace issues. The commercials’ military allusions may go back to retired General Wesley Clark, who is involved in the work. In any event, some 75 percent of the energy contained in a gallon of corn ethanol comes from non-renewable fossil fuels. The corn itself, as we have discussed with reference to Coca-Cola and others, is completely dependent on oil-based fertilizers and pesticides. And, as increasing amounts of corn are used for fuel, the matter of feeding the world becomes more difficult and expensive. That’s hardly a recipe for peace.

Yes, I know, there are several months left in the year, but I’m ready to vote now—Growth Energy for this year’s Most Unethical Advertiser.

Big Pharma
In late 1982, Johnson & Johnson, the giant New Jersey-based pharmaceuticals concern, attained rock-star status in the corporate social responsibility community. It did so when it recalled some 31 million bottles of Tylenol, its best-selling product, at a cost of $100 million, after learning that someone had gone to a retailer’s shelves in Chicago and killed seven people by lacing bottles of the pills with cyanide.

But, by late May of this year, the company’s halo was badly tarnished. Problems in its Puerto Rico plant appear to have surfaced as far back as 2008. Certain products were turning up containing tiny metal particles. Chemicals in its product Motrin were prematurely decomposing and risking its potency. While no bodies have been found, legislators, regulators and other observers have expressed concerns that the company has been slow, and even devious, in bringing these issues to the public.

In the case of Motrin, company internal correspondence indicates that a non-recall recall had been conducted. Contractors were employed to go out and gather up products from retailers. Instructions to the contractors included: “You should simply ‘act’ like a regular customer while making these purchases. THERE MUST BE NO MENTION OF THIS BEING A RECALL OF THE PRODUCT! If asked, simply state that your employer is checking the distribution chain of this product and needs to have some if it purchased for the project.� Right. Let’s see here, I need a loaf of bread, a quart of milk, a carton of ice cream and 800 bottles of Motrin. The company claims it has fired six executives involved in this. Regulators are considering criminal action against the company.

Another story concerning Big Pharma has a more positive trend line. Several years ago, the industry began to receive considerable notoriety when people noticed that significant amounts of the companies’ research, development and marketing budgets were going into products designed to restore lost hair and extend the sex lives of well-to-do old men in developed countries. You see the ads. They’re on innumerable times every day. “If your erection lasts more than a week, jump off a tall building.� Or, whatever.

Criticism of the companies reached a crescendo when this activity was juxtaposed with the massive death toll in developing countries from diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, which were treatable, but not at prices the victims could afford. The companies looked even worse as they fought tooth-and-nail to prevent South Africa and other desperate countries from producing generic versions of their products—while people died in the streets.

But, the industry has come around. The companies have begun making arrangements to get these medicines to those who can’t afford them. Indeed, they have gone beyond that and established criteria for behavior in this area, set up an independent authority to check their performance and provided for public reporting of the results. The most recent report came out in June. GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis and Roche lead the list. In general, European countries are ahead of United States companies, and both are ahead of Japanese companies. Other good news is that Johnson & Johnson is in the top 10 at eighth.

Salt
We have frequently observed in these pages that modern multinational companies will do nearly anything to clean up their operations, so long as it doesn’t entail increasing their costs or decreasing their revenues. We’ve known for decades that salt in our diets is unhealthy. Some experts estimate that salt consumption takes 150,000 lives each year. Just this year, the Institute of Medicine has asked the government to force food companies to seriously reduce the salt content in processed foods, which are now the principal source of this substance.

But, the companies have been resisting all such measures since 1978, when they were first proposed. Michael Moss, in a late-May New York Times article, presents several of the strategies they have employed. They turn out to be strategies used by the beverage industry and others in like circumstances because, of course, they work.

Early on, the companies spon-sored research designed to stimulate public confusion regarding the link between salt and hypertension. They have packed committees organized to advise governmental agencies about these issues. They’ve pointed out that customers will refuse to buy products lacking the sugar and salt content they’ve become accustomed to. Cargill, Kellogg, ConAgra and Campbell Soup are companies noted in the article. Bottom line: don’t look anytime soon for reduced salt content in processed food.

So Many Books, So Little Time
Juliet Schor, a Boston College sociologist, is the author of “Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth.� Plenitude is the name she gives to the concept that wraps up her ideas concerning sustainability. She identifies a growing consensus that considers business as usual “profoundly dysfunctional.� I’m certainly in that camp. I wince each time I see another urgent call for maximum increases in gross domestic product, the flawed measurement of the flawed economy.

Professor Schor further believes that our political systems are simply incapable of bringing the powerful actors in the current economic system to heel and that people themselves must find ways to live and prosper outside this system. She mentions living off the grid in compressed earth houses and raising chickens as examples. I question whether or not personal actions such as these can ever constitute a comprehensive response to the massive problem of over-consumption.

While readily conceding her point that political action is presently doing little or nothing to move us forward on this front, I see no other alternative. We must act wisely as a people, rather than as individuals, to achieve the plenitude of which she speaks. More specifically, I think we have to persevere in our efforts to build political systems with the power to direct our large existing business structures to conduct sustainable business rather than business as usual.

Other books have caught my attention recently, either because of their authors, their titles or reviews. Pioneer sustainability thinker Hazel Henderson has written “Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy.� Spencer Wells, anthropologist, geneticist and explorer-in-residence at National Geographic, has written “Pandora’s Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization.� Paul Collier has written “The Plundered Planet: How to Reconcile Prosperity with Nature.�

Chandran Nair’s new book, “Consumptionomics: Asia’s Role in Reshaping Capitalism and Saving the Planet,� isn’t due out until October, but he hopes to convince Asians that they must take responsibility for putting limits on various forms of consumption. I’m anxious to hear what the Asians will have to say about this after watching the example of the West for all these years!

After careers in public and private accounting, James Donovan joined the business faculty at the University of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio, Texas, in 1982. Having served at UIW for 27 years, at present he is a senior adjunct and teaches the Sustainability Performance and Reporting course to graduate students of accounting and business.