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Perspectives on Business Ethics in a New-age Feed Industry
The business of providing animal feed and nutritional services is becoming increasingly sophisticated and global in nature. As the complexity of the feed industry has increased, both livestock producers and feed suppliers alike perceive that the occurrence of unethical behavior in sales and marketing of feed products is on the rise. This perception likely originates not only from some actual decline in ethical standards but perhaps also from an increasing lack of clarity relative to what actually constitutes ethical practice. This paper will discuss the interpretation of ethical practice in the context of the rapidly evolving field of animal nutrition and the great many new feed technologies and suppliers entering the market from both domestic and international sources. The potential ramifications of a feed industry workforce that is becoming less experienced (youthful) and increasingly foreign-trained will also be discussed in the context of company training programs that probably fall short in both technical depth and ethical mentoring relative to customer relationships. Feed specialists with less professional experience are more susceptible to ethical creep or ethical blindness, as they may have less appreciation for how seemingly trivial corner-cutting leads to cycles of behavior rationalization that slowly progress to practices that are more egregiously unethical. A large proportion of the incidences of unethical practice that are anecdotally reported in the feed industry relate to the selling and usage of feed additives, micronutrients, and other higher-cost applications. Some of the problematic practices that are more prevalent include customer confidentiality breaches, unapproved or erroneous product claims, misrepresentation of effective doses or tag-dressing, undisclosed substitution of branded products, and undisclosed product commissions for parties in fiduciary roles with livestock producers.
This paper will emphasize the need for greater focus on training and mentoring of feed industry employees relative to what constitutes fair business practice and how to sell feed products and programs such that they are honestly represented both for the benefits they can potentially provide and relative to any competitive products and programs. Ethical behavior must be understood to be of collective importance to the feed industry. Unethical practices can have consequences that cause collateral damage to customer bases well beyond that of the offending sales organization. Unethical practices also undermine the trust of suppliers and other key parties that are business-critical to the success of a sales organization.
Keywords: Ethics, Feed industry, Nutrition