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EDITORIAL: Governments are not corporations

In the editorial of last month’s issue of Taiwan Topics Magazine, the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei (AmCham) talked about lessons that should be learned from the melamine-tainted food incident a few months ago.

It noted that many local companies lost millions of US dollars, blaming the lack of professionalism of government officials for exacerbating the situation, while saying that if they had received proper crisis management training like their counterparts at major multinational corporations, the situation would not have gotten out of hand.

While it is reasonable to expect the government to stock its ranks with well-trained staff capable of dealing with such crises, it is wrong to compare the crisis management needs of government officials to those of a public relations officer of a multinational corporation.

Company executives are trained first and foremost to avoid saying anything that could incriminate their employers and protecting profits is the overarching goal. Government priorities are different, with the No. 1 concern being the health of the general public.

Any government or government official that is seen to have placed business interests over the wellbeing of its citizens will not last long.

This was borne out in the case of former Department of Health minister Lin Fang-yue (林芳郁), who was forced to resign on Sept. 25, one day after the department’s announcement that the acceptable level for melamine content in food would be raised to 2.5 parts per million caused a public uproar.

Although they may not have any detrimental long-term effects on health, melamine and other industrial chemicals have no place in the food we eat. The editorial’s suggestion that the crisis could have been avoided if the government had acted quickly to establish acceptable levels on melamine in foods totally misses the point.

Holding up corporations as an example of how governments should act is wrong.

It is powerful corporations and their decision to outsource production to countries like China that have lax or non-existent safety standards in order to cut costs that have resulted in these problems in the first place.

Global corporations use the WTO to bypass government restrictions in the name of free trade and are able to dodge domestic restrictions and rigorous inspection, instead relying on concepts such as “self-regulation.”

That may work well in many countries, but time and again places like China are found to have purposely flouted such regulations — and as in the case of melamine, with deadly consequences.

AmCham shouldn’t be blaming Taiwan’s government for companies incurring losses when the fault lies at someone else’s doorstep.

Although it doesn’t come out and say so directly, it is obvious that the financial losses incurred from the scandal are the main reason for the editorial.

It was profits and the pursuit of money that led unscrupulous Chinese manufacturers such as the Sanlu Group to add melamine to its milk products in the first place, and although it exists to protect the interests of its members, AmCham’s focus on the bottom line means it is equally culpable.
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