Healthy fund

Healthy fund is one new idea from Croatian Health Employers Association. They devoloped idea based on prevention of disieses based on smoking. One box of cigaretes would be 3-5 kunas more expensive then now in next 3 years, and all the money that is collected would be transfered in Croatian health insurence fund, and given to hospitals to heal people who have health problems because of smoking. In their calculations Croatian hospitals would get new 1,5 billions kunas, and also many people would stop smoking, and tobaco consumption would be smaller more then 5%. New money is very important for Croatian health system because they have big debts, and in near future many citizens could lose their health care. 

Animal Testing

There are two types of people, ones that support animal testing and ones that do not.  But anyway, sometimes we unconsciously support companies that do animal testing just by buying their products and because we do not check how those products are tested. There is variety of testing methods, instead of animal testing, and if we all would stop purchasing from those companies and try to persuade them that they are doing harm to the millions of animals, they would maybe change their way of doing business.

The Draize eye tests, LD50 (poison test) and Skin irritacy tests are just some of tests that are used on animals, and after tests are done, those animals are being killed. This is fully unnecessarily, because there is a lot of reseaches that prove that animal testing is not the best way of testing products, because the tissue of animals is way different than ours, and because of that a lot of times those products cause side effects on our body, even if it was approved on animals. A long time ago scientists have developed artificial human leather which is much more convinient testing method, and it does not harm anyone.

Even if there are still so many companies that does cruel expertments on animals, I am more than happy to say that this issue is moving in a positive direction. Decision that companies can no longer conduct animal testing and even testing of animal ingredients was finally made in March 11, 2013. So, since that day, import and sale of those products is prohibited inside the European Union. The ban applies to cosmetic products, including products for personal care, such as soaps and toothpaste.

To conclude, I would like to say that we are the ones who can at least try to stop those companies from animal testing, just by stop buying those products. All you need to do is to check which companies produce products with "Cruelty Free" mark and start buying them instead. When products that are tested on animals begin to stand for months on the shelves in the stores, the company will probably reorient its policy. Because, remember, companies are there only for money, and that money comes from us!

"The Corporation" Movie Review

Hi everybody! We are a team of five girls: Alicja, Marina, Marta, Mia, and Tea; and we are studying at EFZG and taking Corporate Social Responsibility class.

In this blog we will talk about Corporate Social Responsibility and in this very first post, we will discuss our findings in the movie "The Corporation".

"The Corporation" is a Canadian documentary based on a book by Joel Bakan. It talks about history of a corporation and how it all started in 1712 with industrial age. The movie also talks how in the American law, a corporation used to be looked at as a legal person. They perceive the picture of corporation as something that has no moral conscious, but it just responds to stakeholders. They also state how in this capital world, there is no such thing as enough. There is never enough of money, they always want more, and they do not care what is the cost of that. They also compare corporations to sharks, and how they are like killing machines. One other thing that was mentioned in the movie is that if corporations were indeed observed as real people, they would be labeled as psychopaths. 

There are so many examples of big corporations and how they are making money, and it seems like not many of them are aware of corporate social responsibility. All of the corporations mentioned in the movie seem to be unaware of business ethics and environmental sustainability. In one part the movie talks about Monsanto corporation and how they are using antibiotics on cows, and although the research shows and proves how unhealthy that is, they are still producing it and selling it. 

There is one example of Pfizer corporation and its attempts of corporate social responsibility. They had a huge off the court settlement, where afterwards they decided to invest in one community and help with building of the houses and increase the safety of the local subway station. It is a nice attempt, however it also seems how Pfizer can use this in their marketing efforts to increase their sales. 

This documentary perceives a real picture of corporations and how real people and animals are effected, but it seems like their CEO's are unaware of the situations. For example, they say that Nike CEO never took the time to go visit their manufacturing facility. However, we believe that nobody should be pointing fingers and put a blame to a single person, yet corporations should put their efforts in showing their corporate social responsibility on a daily basis, and not just to make up for the horrible things that they have done. 

Here is the link to the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y888wVY5hzw

Thank you for reading!

Alicja, Marina, Marta, Mia, and Tea