So what went wrong? The simple answer is that they were undermining their own public commitment to the ethical treatment of garment workers, by pursuing aggressive purchasing practices that forced their suppliers to cut costs and ultimately, the health and safety of garment workers. The reality is that when a garment producer in a country like Bangladesh is under pressure to process a large and urgent order from their buyer, it’s often the ethical code that is abandoned to fulfil the demands of the foreign retailer.