Healthy Skepticism Library item: 9034
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Ribena maker fined $192,000
The Age (Melbourne) 2007 Mar 27
http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/ribena-maker-admits-misleading-public/2007/03/27/1174761427980.html
Full text:
The multi-national company that makes Ribena has been fined a total of $NZ217,500 ($A192,900) after it admitted its advertisements misled the public about the drink’s vitamin C content.
Glaxosmithkline was also ordered in the Auckland District Court today to run corrective advertisements, in addition to a message on its website.
Earlier today, the company admitted to 15 representative charges covering offences between 2002 and 2006.
It agreed that its cartoned ready to drink Ribena, which it claimed had 7mg of vitamin C per 100ml, in fact had no detectable vitamin C content.
The company also admitted it may have misled customers in advertisements saying the blackcurrants in Ribena syrup had four times the vitamin C of oranges.
The NZ Commerce Commission has been pushing for a fine between $NZ275,000 ($A244,000) and $NZ350,000 ($A310,000) and corrective television advertising.
Glaxosmithkline had argued for a fine of $NZ60,000 ($A53,000) and no corrective television advertising.
The case came after two high school students, Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo, tested the children’s drink against advertising claims that “the blackcurrants in Ribena have four times the vitamin C of oranges” in 2004.
Instead, the two found the syrup-based drink contained almost no trace of vitamin C, and one commercial orange juice brand contained almost four times more than Ribena.
“We thought we were doing it wrong, we thought we must have made a mistake,” Devathasan, now aged 17, told New Zealand newspapers of the school experiment.
GSK paid little attention to the claims of Devathasan and Suo until their complaints reached the Commerce Commission.
The girls were in court today
