George Fox was not a unit of PepsiCo

Sometime last year, PepsiCo, Inc bought Quaker. You’ll remember that PepsiCo Inc was the company that had no problem working with the military rule of the State Law & Order Restoration Council (SLORC) in Burma (Myanmar). After a large amount of negative publicity, PepsiCo pulled out of the deal in 1997.

I try to be a quaker, though I’m not very good at it yet. I’m not happy with corporations trading on the integrity associated with the name of the Religious Society of Friends, especially when these corporations do not act in a manner in keeping with the tenets of Quakerism.

I guess if a group of members of the Religious Society of Friends started selling organic oatmeal, they could call themselves Quaker Oats. After all, the now-unit of PepsiCo only registered their trademark in 1877, yet the name Quaker was coined in the 1650s…