Dole Mission Statement

Companies use mission statements to voice what their intentions and goals are as a business. They publish their mission statement to summarize this information and also use it as a tool to guide and shape their business. It's important that a company holds true to their values and objectives stated as they do business to keep a clean reputation.
I wanted to look at Dole Food Company for this assignment and see if what they are saying is the main focus of their business looks to be accurate based on their website. Dole is best known for pineapple and pineapple products as well as bananas but does a range of fresh and perserve fruits and vegetables.
Dole's mission statement reads
“Dole Food Company, Inc. is committed to supplying the consumer
They have programs for food safety, scienctific pest management, quality control measures and “state-of-the-art” production and transportation technologies (Philosophy,2015). It sounds like with these four things in place is a very good way to provide top quality food. The safety makes sure anything you are producing and giving to consumers is safe to eat. Pest management would ensure that fruit isn't getting partially damaged or compromised in any way. Dole has much more produce now, but it's main focus is bananas and pineapples. On both these fruits it would be hard to detect pests and damage done because they are usually hard on the outside and have a protective layer. Quality control would be a rating system or some way of making sure that anything below standards does not go to market. Having advanced production and transportation technologies would help grow better quality produce and hopefully perserve it's freshness and well being on the way to retail. This would be a final key step to maintain high quality products. Overall, from Dole's website they appear to have all thing in place to live up to this standard in their mission
Dole talks about it's 5 a day program it set up in 1991 to help encourage kids to eat a healthier diet. By encouraging them to eat between 5-13 servings of fruit and vegetables a day (Timeline). There is also an Articles section on their website with a lot of information about diet, fitness, health etc. It goes beyond their products so that shows a commitment to educating people about eating better.
In the research department, Dole has set up the Dole Nutrition Institue (DNI) which has 8 universities collaborating with Dole scientists. The information they gather is then distributed in different ways through a newletter, videos, and cookbooks to name a few. So I'd give them a check in the leading the industry in research and education.
Finally, we can look at how Dole is in an ethical light. They want to be “adhering to the highest ethical conduct in all its business dealings, treatment of its employees, and social and environmental policies” (About Dole Food Company, 2015). As far as business dealings and treatment of employees, they have a Code of Conduct posted on this website outlining their viewpoints on this. It's 23 pages long and covers topics like compliance with laws, maintaining a safe, healthy work environment and positive and respectful workplace. Also talks about commitment to global communities and accuracy of books and records (Dole Code of Conduct, 2013) . This is reflective of what was