KEY POINTS:
The story of two school students who uncovered the Ribena deception is the kind of David-and-Goliath yarn that warms the heart. GlaxoSmithKline, the local subsidiary of a multinational drug company, brushed aside concerns raised in 2004 by Pakuranga College students Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo about the level of vitamin C in their Ribena fruit drink. They paid the price for their deceit and their offhandedness this week when they were fined $227,500 and ordered to pay for corrective advertising - and the news has made waves around the world.
Good result. But such a fine won't hurt a company whose annual sales top $150 million and whose parent company turns over more than $61 billion. Their cynical deceit, based on a calculated piece of sophistry, was bad enough but their arrogant refusal to do anything about it for two years hugely aggravates the offence. The public still has the option of punishing the manufacturer by withdrawing custom, but the law should have come down harder.
Further, the case has demonstrated the gaping hole in our food labelling and advertising laws. It's pretty obvious that the New Zealand Food Safety Authority isn't doing its job when a company can position as a healthy alternative a "nutritional" drink that contains no Vitamin C and more sugar than Coca-Cola.
Plainly we cannot rely on manufacturers to tell the truth about their products; but we should not have to rely on enterprising college students to expose such flagrant deceits.
