Global Policy Forum

By Jim Lobe

Companies from Big Oil, Big Tobacco, and the pharmaceutical and bio-technology sectors are among a list of 10 ''most irresponsible'' corporations of the year 2000 released here this week by Washington-based Multinational Monitor magazine and the Corporate Crime Reporter (CCR). The list, which has been compiled each year since 1987, found that two oil companies - British Petroleum (BP)/Amoco and Phillips Petroleum - ignored US environmental and worker-safety regulations; while the disclosure of internal documents showed that British American Tobacco (BAT) systematically promoted smuggling of its cigarettes on a global scale. It also charged that Glaxo-Wellcome, along with other pharmaceutical giants, has actively tried to block efforts to distribute cheap, generic anti-AIDS drugs in poor African countries.

''The 'Ten Worst Corporations of the Year' highlight in stark terms the consequences of corporate power run amok,'' according to Robert Weissman, the editor of Multinational Monitor, a monthly which is part of the organizational network run by Ralph Nader, who won about three percent of the vote as the Green Party candidate in November's presidential elections. ''These include despoilment of the natural environment, infliction of preventable disease, smashing of unions, invasions of privacy, corruption of democracy, and more,'' he added.

Co-author of an accompanying article and CCR editor Russell Mokhiber said the 10 corporations and the activities which landed them on this year's list were ''just the tip of the iceberg'' of corporate misconduct in the United States and overseas. According to the authors, the listed companies all engaged in behaviour that clearly put their narrow corporate interests ahead of the public or environmental welfare. Aventis, the French bio-tech company, was scored for introducing Cry9C corn, sold under the name StarLink, into the environment and, more shockingly, into the conventional food supply, when it had not yet been approved for human consumption by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

As a genetically modified organism (GMO), StarLink had gained EPA approval for use in animal feed or non-food industrial purposes only, but the approval was conditioned on Aventis notifying farmers of the critical importance of isolating it from other corn to prevent contamination. The GMO, however, spread either because uninformed farmers did not maintain the required buffer zone or because it was mixed in grain elevators. The corn ended up in commercially sold taco shells and other foods. While Aventis offered to buy back all StarLink corn, its main efforts have been directed at speeding EPA approval of the crop for human consumption despite evidence that it poses allergenic risks.

BAT, the world's second largest tobacco company, is not alone in the industry in promoting international cigarette smuggling, which is designed to evade excise taxes and create more demand in target countries, according to the article. But internal records uncovered by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) have made it clear that BAT, despite its own denials, has used smuggling as a deliberate strategy, according to the article. BP/Amoco, despite its reputation for sensitivity to environmental concerns, has been forced to pay tens of millions of dollars in fines for environmental violations and a failure to pay royalties to the US government during the past year, and, along with other oil companies, has been lobbying the US Congress to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

Along with other oil giants, according to the article, the company has also been behind Republican efforts in Congress to harass a public- interest group for its efforts to uncover Big Oil's underpayment of government royalties. Phillips Petroleum made the list this year as a result of a massive explosion at its plastics plant in Pasadena, Texas last March in which one person was killed and 74 injured. It was the third fatal accident at the Phillips' plant there since 1989 when another blast killed 23 people, and the fourth within a one-year period.

The federal agency that oversees worker safety found that the company did not adequately train its workers and has proposed fining it 25 million dollars for its negligence. The article reported that the company, along with other members of the Chemical Manufacturers Association, recently lobbied for legislation which would not require the chemical companies to make public estimated ''worst-case'' scenarios for accidents which could take place at their facilities.

DoubleClick, Inc., the world's largest Internet advertising business, also made the list this year for its alleged efforts to obtain confidential information about Internet users. The attorney general of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm, sued the company this year for failing to disclose to users that the company is systematically implanting ''cookies'' - electronic surveillance files which compile information about the user's Internet-cruising habits - on the hard drives of their computers without their knowledge or consent. It has reportedly collected 100 million consumer profiles in this way.

In a rare double-hit, this year's list charged both the Ford Motor Company and Firestone, a subsidiary of Japan's Bridgestone, with ''reckless homicide'' in connection with the more than 90 deaths and hundreds of injuries in hundreds of deadly accidents caused by tire failure of Ford Explorer sports utility vehicles in the United States and elsewhere. While evidence of the potential lethality of the Ford-Firestone combination accumulated steadily since 1990, both companies failed to act to remedy the problem until only this year when a federal agency opened an investigation, according to the article.

Glaxo-Wellcome was cited for its efforts to prevent Cipla, an Indian generic drug-maker which produces a key anti-AIDS drug on which Glaxo claims to have patent rights, from distributing them in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa where only a tiny fraction of the more than 20 million people afflicted with HIV/AIDS can afford the western-made drugs.

Defence giant Lockheed Martin also made the list for testing a toxic component of rocket fuel on human subjects, a step medical researchers and environmentalists denounced as unethical and unscientific. The chemical, perchlorate, has been found in water wells near a big Lockheed plant. The testing, in which 100 people are paid 1,000 dollars each to take up to 83 times the ''safe'' level of the chemical perchlorate, is apparently aimed at persuading the EPA that it is not as toxic as previously believed. If the EPA then permits higher concentrations of perchlorate in water supplies, the company will save millions of dollars in clean-up costs, according to the article.

Two other companies are also cited in this year's list: Smithfield Foods whose near-monopoly power in the US pork industry is threatening family farms across the nation and spreading factory farms that are polluting water supplies in key rural areas; and Titan International, a wheel and tire manufacturer, which, according to the articles, has systematically resorted to illegal tactics to replace its unionised work force.

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