If you ban hidden ingredients in your products, services and indeed, entire supply chain, you begin to significantly improve against a key measure we believe is vital to operating an authentic and ethical business.

One of the ten criteria we believe is integral to operating an ethical business is the mindful and ethical creation and delivery of products along entire value chain.

This means opening up your processes, product components and sources of those components to public scrutiny. This is a strategic decision, probably aligned with your higher purpose and company culture.

“Every day there are new cases in the media of businesses using surreptitious naming of ingredients to hide sources and components they should really be avoiding the first place.”

Take the example of palm oil. By popular accounts there are around 200 derivative names of palm oil which have been claimed to be a method of hiding its inclusion in products as wide as food for human consumption to cosmetics. A recent example exposed by the BBC identified that pork gelatine has been used in NHS vaccines.

This article is not designed to point the finger or highlight more examples of unethical practice, but rather to begin the debate of just how important it is that you declare everything that makes up your products, where it comes from and how it moves through each step of your supply chain. Such an attitude probably begins at the top of your organisation, where leaders need to set an expectation and culture of transparency that in itself begins to add an extra level of marketing possibilities as you seek to establish competitive edge in your busy marketplace.

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