Firm gets €117,330 fine after pupils ‘C’ through Ribena claims

THE makers of blackcurrant drink, Ribena, were yesterday fined the equivalent of €117,330 after two schoolgirls found the product contained almost no trace of Vitamin C.

GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) claims over the Vitamin C content of Ribena were proved wrong in a simple experiment by 14-year-old New Zealand pupils, Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo.

The pair were looking at the Vitamin C content of popular drinks to see if cheaper products contained less of the nutrient than brands like Ribena.

But when their experiment showed the reverse was true, the schoolgirls thought they had got the wrong results, according to a report in yesterday’s New Zealand Herald newspaper.

“We thought we were doing it wrong. We thought we must have made a mistake,” said Anna, a pupil at Auckland’s Pakuranga College.

In fact, the girls’ experiment showed each 100ml of Ribena contained just 22mg of Vitamin C compared to orange juice products containing levels of about 72mg.

At the time the experiment was carried out in 2004, the makers of Ribena were claiming in New Zealand that the blackcurrants in their drink had four times the Vitamin C content of oranges.

The teenagers sent their findings to Ribena bosses in New Zealand but got no reply, so they phoned instead.

“They didn’t even really answer our questions. They just said it’s the blackcurrants that have it (Vitamin C), then they hung up,” said Jenny.

Yesterday the pair, now 17 years old, were at Auckland District Court to see GSK fined a sum of NZ$217,500 (€117,330) after the firm admitted to charges of misleading advertising.

GSK, one of the world’s biggest food and drug makers, admitted that its cartoned, ready-to-drink Rib-ena in fact had no detectable Vitamin C content.

The company also admitted it may have misled customers in advertisements saying the blackcurrants in Ribena concentrated syrup had four times the Vitamin C of oranges.

The company ended up in court because the teenagers — undeterred by the international firm’s refusal to answer their questions — took their findings to New Zealand consumer affairs television programme, Fair Go.

The New Zealand government’s commerce commission, which protects consumers, took up the case and brought GSK to court yesterday on 15 false advertising claims.

Commission chairwoman, Paula Rebstock, said: “It is very disappointing to see a major pharmaceutical and health products company like GlaxoSmithKline mislead the public in this way.”

She added this was “a massive breach of trust with the New Zealand public”.

GSK said yesterday that concerns about Vitamin C only affected certain products in New Zealand but not those in Ireland.