Business Ethics and the Nutraceutical Industry: Prospectus for an Emerging Regime

Abstract

The nutraceutical industry presents several ethical problems for both natural and genetically engineered functional foods. These include concerns over adequate disclosure of information on the characteristics of nutraceuticals. Scholars writing on functional foods have not turned a great deal of attention to the ethical issues, although such issues are important to the industry. Government regulation of functional foods is a real possibility and the regulatory interest is likely to increase.

Cases such as the Tylenol crisis and the Source Perrier Benzene contamination are instructive to the industry. Both the industry and its members should seek to generate corporate values that will enable its members and managers to treat with crisis management in an ethical manner. The adoption of codes of ethics may be the first step in the process, and this may make the prospect of government regulation less intimidating.

Keywords: Ethics, business ethics, codes of ethics, nutraceutical, functional foods, regulation, genetic engineering , health and regulatory agencies, moral management, Food and Drug Administration, FDA,ethical decision making,

JEL Classification: I1, I12, I18, I19, K12, K23, M14, L65, L66