NEW ZEALAND:The makers of one of the world's best-known fruit cordials were fined by a New Zealand court yesterday after two schoolgirls exposed them for misleading consumers over vitamin C levels in their Ribena blackcurrant drink.
High school students Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo in 2004 tested the drink against advertising claims that "the blackcurrants in Ribena have four times the vitamin C of oranges".
Instead, the pair found the syrup-based drink made by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) contained almost no trace of vitamin C, and one commercial orange juice brand contained almost four times more.
GSK paid little attention until the claims of the two students reached New Zealand's consumer watchdog Commerce Commission. Appearing in an Auckland court on 15 charges of breaching the New Zealand's fair trading act, GSK pleaded guilty and admitted its advertisements may have left consumers with a wrong impression of the health benefits of Ribena.
The judge fined the company NZ$227,500 (€122,466) for misleading advertising.
The Commerce Commission said GSK's behaviour was a "massive" breach of trust with the New Zealand public.
GSK told the court it had not deliberately set out to mislead consumers, and that the fault lay with its testing methods. "The fact that some of our products had incorrect labelling is, to us, unacceptable and we sincerely regret any confusion caused to customers who feel they may have been misled," it said
The court also ordered the company to place advertisements in major metropolitan New Zealand newspapers to correct its mistakes. - ( Reuters )