Define "Chocolate Factory"
Cadbury pleads guilty after chocolate hit by salmonella scare - Yahoo! News
This goes out to all of those people who turn up their nose with disgust at the sight of the inside of those chocolate eggs.
Ought we think that the guilty plea was the honorable move? These guys already took a kick in the pants for the recall--to the tune of 30 million GBP. That's 1 million GBP per person who got sick.
For my American friends, at the current exchange rate, that's $59,297,912 and change, or $1,976,597 per person who got sick from eating their dirty chocolate. (That sounds so filthy, doesn't it? Does "tainted chocolate" sound any better?)
Now, they are facing jail time and an unlimited fine potential. Have they nothing left to lose, or are their pockets so deep that they don't mind?
I wonder if the British nobility in them has led them to just accept culpability. Let's talk a little bit about the brands you know and love that fall under the name of this company, whose stock is taking a major dump right now.
Their business profile:
Cadbury Schweppes plc engages in the confectionery and nonalcoholic beverages businesses worldwide. The company's beverage products include carbonated water, apple juice, quinine-based carbonated drink, carbonated soft drink, non-carbonated soft drink, and tomato-based drink under Dr.Pepper, Schweppes, 7 Up, Snapple, Mott's, Hawaiian Punch, Clamato, and Schweppes Tonic Water brand names. Its confectionery products comprise cocoa powder, candy, cough drop, chewing gum, milk chocolate bar, sugar-coated gum, and breath freshener, which are marketed under Cadbury, Bassett's, Maynard's, Halls Cough Tablets, Dentyne, Cadbury Dairy Milk, Chiclets, Clorets, Stimorol, Trident, Bubblicious, and Sour Patch Kids brand names. Cadbury Schweppes sells its products to consumers through various outlets, including grocery stores and petrol station kiosks, as well as fountain equipment at leisure, food, and entertainment venues. The company was founded in 1783 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom. (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=CSG)
There's some talk of them spinning off the beverage division in the US. Good news, I suppose, for the lovers of 7-UP, Dr. Pepper, and ginger ale. But that's only going to earn the parent entity a few million bucks, and they are in it much deeper than that with the British government.
It's crazy how a leaky pipe in one location can bring such an enterprise to its knees. For want of a shoe, the confectioner's kingdom was lost.