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Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

stories.mightyearth.org

41–50 of 91 posts

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#41
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.

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.

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.

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#42
post #15
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it completely ignores what the company has done for Minneapolis and the surrounding area. But it’s easy to disregard local knowledge when Internet outrage is the preferred reaction.

Then please inform us what the local benefits are that justify a global history of forced child labor, slavery, dumping toxic waste, poisoning food products, etc, etc?

nowhere in the article does it state "forced child labor" Try again.

So you are against children having economic opportunity ? Congratulations, you just denied John Rockefeller his fortune

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#43
post #39

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.

What's partisan about it?

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#44
post #4

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 etc... 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…

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

Oh it's worse than that. Go to your favorite restaurant (or any restaurant really) and ask if they use kosher salt. If they answer in the affirmative, ask which brand they use. Dollars to donuts it's Diamond brand.

Guess who owns Diamond?

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#45
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.

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#46
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.

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#47

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.

The main pollution source in ground water aquifers around here is two fold, salt water contamination or chlorinated solvent leakage. The former is caused by oil wells drilled during ww2 without proper casement and sealing, and the latter is caused by small government corruption. The plumes of each are organic, ironically enough, and can be fixed with simple bacteria and recirculation wells. Long cry from the opening statements in this article.

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#48

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.

Not sure why it’s hyperbole - they never said all Midwesterners drank it, just that there were Midwesterners who drank it. And did you only drink water at home or from a bottle? If not, you can’t be sure you never drank Cargill polluted waters.

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#49
> 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.

On the contrary, there are strong philosophical arguments that selling meat and eggs, as Cargill does, is 'inherently' immoral.

Re: Cargill: The Worst Company in the World

#50
post #39

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.

Voting for a racist that puts babies in concentration camps is a fairly extreme overreaction to someone criticizing the environmental impact of a company to say the least.

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