Beech-Nuts Bogus Apple Juice

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Beech-Nuts Bogus Apple Juice Beech-Nut is one of the major distributors of apple juice for babies within the baby food industry. In 1981 the executives brought on Lars Hoyvald to help turn the company which was in financial turmoil around. A year after Hoyvald joined the company he learned that the Beech Nut apple juice for babies in which they were selling was made from concentrate which included no apples. The company has been purchasing low cost apple juice concentrate since 1977 from a supplier in the Bronx called Universal Juice Company. Questions should have come about sooner based on the fact that the supplier price was lower than the market value for apple juice. John Lavery the vice president of operations received test and information from employees that indicated something wasn’t right with the apple juice but choose to look the other way because the juice had no harmful effect on babies. Once executives found out about the problem they urged Hoyvald to switch suppliers and recall the apple juice. He was hesitant because the company would have a substantial loss of approximately 3.5 million if he moved forward with a recall. Another reason he did not want to do a recall was based on his promise to his superiors that he would turn a 7 million profit for that year. Hoyvald decided to continue and deceive the consumers until 1983. My analysis of this case is that both Hoyvald and Lavery had a moral and legal obligation to stop distributing bogus apple juices once they received facts that their Beech Nut apple juice was made from concentrate that included no apples. The fact that Hoyvald learned of the problem after a year of his employment would have justified reasoning for a recall. Especially, since he was not a part of the company when they started utilizing the supplier of the concentrated juice. Instead of acting ethically to resolve this issue

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