The first thought (ok second thought, could visiting a competitor be a fireable offense?) that came to mind as we approached the entrance to the Tilllamook Creamery was whether the company I worked for, Darigold, could pull off the same feat. Who would go out of their way to Sunnyside to visit a cheese plant? The company had tried to open a dairy store there but did not gain much traction and so was closed to make room for office space. Milk powder from our Chehalis, Lynden, and Jerome plants or fluid milk from the manufacturing facilities in Seattle and Spokane would not have much of a draw either. The Issaquah plant had potential; maybe others would be as fascinated as I was watching cottage cheese being made. But the honest truth was Darigold did not have the universal allure of ice cream.
Transparency is a popular but preposterous corporate buzzword. The term is often used to mollify the public but in reality it is to help business executives sleep better at night. The bottom line is the bottom line, whether it is cloaked as an altruistic attempt to improve the lives of people in a third-world country through jobs or revealing CO2 emissions in an annual corporate responsibility report. But what if the word was used literally rather than just ideologically?
In the developed world, people are intentionally distanced from their food sources. Cows are slaughtered and packaged behind closed doors. Chickens are raised in close quarters, many times never seeing the light of day until the very end. Fruits and vegetables are grown in foreign countries and shipped to nearby grocery stores, disadvantaging local producers. But what if lip service was just not given to transparency and governments actually required that all businesses be open to the public? A birds-eye view (from behind glass) of how cars were assembled or the production of dish detergent could be a start.
