I have eaten a lot of cheese in my lifetime. In some way, I usually manage to worm this delicious dairy delight into my meals. So imagining a single meal, let alone a lifetime, without cheese is unimaginable, but for vegan’s, this is a reality or was until recently. With the increase of plant-based foods, vegans now have just as much access cheese, even if made of cashews, as the rest of us, that is until a pharmaceutical brand, Otsuka, took over a largely popular vegan cheese company name Daiya. Otsuka does drug tests on animals, which raises the question, is Daiya no longer a vegan company anymore because some of their income goes this pharmaceutical company? Should we as consumer care this much about who runs the small company that we like? The answer to both of these question is no and to see why consumer should not blame the small company for the ways of a parent company and leaders acts , I will start by warming the milk to see how chief executives choices affect their company, then I will add rennet and see subsidiary companies are affected by parent companies, and finally I will drain the whey and see how far purity in buying products should go. Let's go make some cheese.

Starting by warming the milk, we will look at how CEOs affect the company. To do this let us first look at one major CEO who within the past couple year has made a couple of mistakes, Elon Musk. An article written in September 2018 by Eric Walz published by Future Car, explained how Musk “lied to investors when he claimed he had secured the funding to take the automaker private” and this lie affects stockholders because going private means they may have to sell their stocks. This, however, doesn’t explain to us how this event impacts the sales of Tesla, but Eric Loveday can help answer this. Looking at his article titled “Tesla Model 3 sales Hit Epic Volume in August” written on September 5, 2018, he says “Tesla sold an epic 17,800 Model 3s in August. Shocked? Of course, that’s the highest ever for sales of a single plug-in electric car in any month”. Showing that even though Musk lied at the beginning of the month, consumers continued to purchase Tesla’s newest electric car. Diving even further into this it becomes evident that going private does not affect Testa consumers; however, it does show CEO dishonesty doesn’t impact the level of consumers trust in a company. Now that we understand that the consumer doesn’t blame companies for their chief executives, it is time to continue making this cheese.

Now that we warmed the milk, it is time to add the rennet and continue this cheese making process by investigating the relationship between parent and subsidiary companies, especially in relationship to how business processes. In order to understand this argument, it is first important to understand what a subsidiary company is. Recruit an article called “What is a Subsidiary Company” written by Jean Murray in October of 2018 published by The Balance explain a Subsidiary company as “a company owned and controlled by another company” and a parent company as the company that holds the majority of the stock. Now this may seem like the parent companies are simply expanded their businesses, but that is not the case. The subsidiary company still has its own management and high-level executives the only difference, they share their purse with the parent company.

Now it is necessary to look deeper into the relationship between a parent and subsidiary company. First, we will look at the legal issue with the relations of these company. The article titled “When is a Parent Company Liable for the Acts of a Subsidiary” written by Kyle Hulten updated in March of 2018, summarizes a US Supreme Court Case, United States v. Best Foods, and helps to explain how parent company is almost never liable for the action of the subsidiary company. There are three rare exceptions to this rule. This court case, however, does not answer if the question of the legal responsibility of a subsidiary company if the parent company becomes accused. Grant Houston clarifies this point in his article titled “What Happens to a Subsidiary Company if the Parent Company Becomes Insolvent” by examining what happens if a parent company is insolvent or losing assets. He uses this situation to detail a bit more about liability by stating that . “the subsidiary company to continue operations” or through bankruptcies, the subsidiary company keeps operating. As a consequence, this shows that a subsidiary company, in terms of bankruptcies, is not liable for the action of the parent company. However, this does not show how the consumer views these two company and to see this we must finish make the cheese and look at the purity of these companies.

Now that the rennet has been added, it is time to drain the whey and how pure these companies come across to consumers. In order to examine this, it is time to go back and explain more about the problem vegan had with Daiya. In an article called “7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Boycott Daiya” written by Michael Favata in September of 2017 published by The Reasonable Vegan, the seventh reason had to do with purity. Favata says “If you boycott the purchase of products with any ties to animal exploitation, what are you able to buy? Vegan products, from vegan companies with vegan owners? There’s simply no logical end to this sort of purity testing.” and with this, it becomes apparent that even a vegan realizes that this purity is not logical. However, looking at the other side of the story we see an online petition on Change called “Keep Daiya Vegan! Reject the Otsuka Acquisition” that has the support of seven thousand people, who all use the fact that Otsuka is getting some of the profit for the sale of the vegan cheese. The major argument against this petition, pointed out by Favata, is that Daiya is giving money to pharmaceutical companies in other, less direct, ways. For example, let’s say it is flu season and a worker at Daiya needs to get a vaccination, so they go to a doctor and pay for a vaccination. By compensating this worker, Daiya is helping to pay the doctor who in turn pays companies like Otsuka to get the vaccines. This back and forth ultimately leads to the resolution of the argument, and the completion of the cheese, so now it’s time to try a bite.

Now that we have created some cheese, let us go back and eat it by reviewing all the evidence placed on the platter. First we saw how companies cannot be blamed for the actions of their chief executive, then we moved on and saw how legal subsidiary company are not responsible for the action of their parent, and finally, we looked at the purity of companies. Put all of this together, we can see blaming a company for the faults of management is not fair to the companies, instead, the companies should be blamed for their own actions. If a company lies about something, blame them, or if a company test drugs on animals blame them. Unfortunately though, in the case of Daiya, a choice of the parent company may have impacted their status as a vegan company. Recently I went to order pizza at a restaurant and noticed the vegan options listed one was vegan cheese while the other was “Daiya® vegan” cheese. By making this distinction this restaurant, PizzaRev is still contesting if Daiya is truly vegan.