Media Criticism

A lot of people have had some questions for me about my company (the name is being left out due to some previous criticism that I should not be using the company name due to all kinds of attacks we are under). While by no means am I an expert on our company, our CFO spoke yesterday and had some interesting facts.

I think the first thing that everyone needs to realize is that our company, just like any other large corporation, has its flaws. While we used to consider ourselves small, we have grown, in the last 5 years, over 8 times our market capitalization to $50 billion plus. Needless to say, as we continue to grow and get bigger, we continue to open ourselves up to further criticism. It is the nature of the beast.

To be honest, there are some things that our company, under previous leadership, did that is deplorable; I think the biggest negative that people still associate our company with is Agent Orange. We aren't running from our mistakes, nor do we not take responsibility for those actions. While the true nature of Agent Orange is to be used as a herbicidal defoliant, nonetheless, during the Vietnam War, it was used incorrectly, and furthermore, used with long-term damaging health effects to many people.

Yet, we aren't that company any more. If you want to hang your hat on something, we don't make the same mistakes that we previously were a part of. We have come under a lot of criticism recently from this article in Vanity Fair, the newscast on seed piracy on CBS, and a new movie being shown on some college campuses and in European movie theaters.

While our stance as a company has been relatively quiet, we have developed a new website to answer some of these questions/complaints/attacks/criticisms. While it is a company-developed site and you may think it only has our spin, I can assure you that these are truthful responses to these items. Additionally, I can tell you that some differences we are making, through our strides in technology and company initiatives, that this is a company I am proud to work for. Have we made mistakes in the past? Sure. We all have. Some of our mistakes are worse than others. But, I truly believe some of the things that we are developing will make a difference in millions of people's lives, and for that, I am proud to tell people where I work (I just can't say the name on this blog).