Obviously, the ethical loyalties here are massive. However, I believe that there is one loyalty that isn’t exactly what we might think on first glance.
But first we should list out some of the more obvious loyalties.
There is the loyalty first to those who pay her. This includes the food producer and her marketing bosses. She is paid to do a job and she needs to do it well, and doing her job well means selling food products.
A second ethical loyalty is the marketer’s loyalty to herself. She has to make sure she is still making money and also comfortable with her ethical decisions. One typically does not make ethical decisions that are contrary to their ethical beliefs.
However, I think that the loyalty that may be most surprising to the reader is that the marketer has a loyalty to the buyers of her product as well.
I know, I know, it seems like she is lying to the customers, but she even mentions it in her speech. She has to market her products in a way that makes her consumers want to buy her product.
Seriously. If marketers were completely honest about how their food is made, how many of use would continue to buy the food that we do? Can it be argued that she has to be manipulative?
That is her loyalty to her consumer. Her loyalty is to continue to be dishonest to them so they aren’t scared of buying food.
In conclusion, there are lots of different loyalties that a person has to weigh before he/she can decide what is and isn’t ethical. The ethical decision maker has to decide which loyalties are most important to him/her and put those at the forefront of the ethical decision. That’s the beauty of ethics, it’s up to you to make those decisions and live with the consequences.
Andrew Bay 