The Banning Of Coca Cola Toxicated Products In India

By Author: Anthony W Bills
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The Banning of Coca Cola Toxicated Products In India
Business growth and development is not an easy. Sometime it becomes very complex and sophisticated to position and put the business in the right truck. Maintaining of healthy business environment is one of the biggest challenges which face most of the corporations. The coca cola corporations and the Pepsi Company which is two renowned corporations found entangled into dungeon crisis and difficulties poor quality in India. The claims of the coca cola and Pepsi Corporation in India raised several issues that were closed linked with the incident and that were ethically of paramount consideration concerning the ban of the businesses in the region.
The Pepsi and the coca cola corporations are depicted as the largest companies which over the years have operated in the regions competitively. This competitive business environment by the two companies had led to extreme low price soft drinks and beverages.
The companies were established under the foreign regulatory act (FERA) which means their operations must be in accordance with the international set standards ...
... of quality products.
In addition, the coca cola Corporation is among the leaders of foreign investors in the region. It has invested a billion plus in the country. Good performance in the previous year motivated the company to increase it investment and expansion in 2003.
The growth and expansion of the corporations in India has enabled it to open job opportunities to the locals which are approximated to seven thousand. Through their distribution and supply channel, the company absorbed more than eight hundred locals.
The centre for science and environment which is based in New Delhi alleged presence of pesticides residue such the DDT, Malathion, Chlorpyrifos and lindane.
The chemical have negative health effects by affecting several body systems such as the reproductive, nervous and immune systems.
The coca cola and Pepsi alleged that the CSE accusations of false and without evidence. They argument is that they were following the international standards which were laid down by the united state environmental protection Agency. They thus go on threatening the CSE body for these claims as they believed it was tarnishing the company’s reputation in the same manner other organization used to rise against the corporations or governments for their own benefit.
The locals concur with the finding disclosed by the CSE body. Based upon the above information, one may ask how reliable the CSE claims against the coca cola company are. Is the coca cola company trustworthy and honest in its business operations? If the claims of CSE were correct, was the actions taken against Coca Cola Company by the government fair or should the government have consider the job opportunities, revenue and other benefits such as employment it provide more important than the pesticide locals’ health effects.

The introduction of the coca cola company was all a mystery in Indians markets, which came after much struggle of rejections in the 1977, a time when the international policies were flawed and faulty. The company won access to the Indian’s market through its high production standards formulated by pharmacist John Pemberton many decades before. The government of India was persuaded to permit such international companies like the Pepsi and the coca cola corporation to their local markets that not only led to the collapsing of the long establish brands such Limca, Citra and Maazi, which were popular non-alcoholics beverage prior to the permeation of the coca cola brands including Fanta, Sprite, Coca Cola and diet Coke
Despites great challenges which the company had experienced in its established, the company strategies attracted the large Indian market of through production of unprecedented unique quality brands. The company thus rose to prominence through brands management and distinctive marketing strategies making it to realize its profitability break even within the shortest time. The local communities had trusted the products of the company and by the millennium year, it was doubtless that the coca cola company and the close Pepsi companies were the leaders in the Indians markets.
Despite the coca cola company having the loin share of the Indian’s market, they envisioned to double its market share as well as doubling its sales returns in the following year. However, on 15th august, the CSE agency unveiled shocking information concerning intoxicated coca cola products. The company brands quality had been deteriorated and as consequent the overall market drastically reduced compelling the CEO to convene a company committee to look for suitable future strategy. Meanwhile, the coca cola company and the Pepsi Corporation had to recall more than fifty million bottles of their brands after the Indian health ministry in conjunction with the India bureau of standard- a body that deals with quality of products that are traded in India- declared a ban on coca cola beverages.
The coca cola products had been suspected to cause alarming and serious nervous problems and other carcinogenic ailment to over 100 thousand consumers within three month duration. Before the ban and recall of the thousands of bottles, the company had been ordered to recollect a similar amount of batch in the previous four months. Stomach problems and miscarriage in women became a major problem for most of the customers. The company was producing most of its product such sprite, fanta and Diet coke, but it had also outsourced the production of such products to other companies.
The multinational corporations market suffered greatly threats in the international market. Whereas the local governments such as those of Belgium and India paid no much attention on regulating Major Corporation such as coca cola and Pepsi, the companies took the weak position of the regulatory procedures of the government. Without taking much concern on, the coca cola company took its stands to maintain its business reputations. It therefore forced the company’s CEO Sajvin Gupta to defend the company from being blemish in any away. Unethical, the coca cola company management response about the allegation was only to maintain the respect of the company and forsake the health safety of the consumers. According to the CEO comments, he neither took the initiative to investigate the matter, but ignorantly, he insensitively argued that their products were still in accordance with the international standards. Further, he convincingly assured the consumers of the quality product as safe and therefore pleaded for continuation of the usage of the unsafe drinks.

Ethical issues arise in aspect of organizations especially in their decisions, marketing and management styles. For instance, in 2003 the Indian NGO, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) based in New Delhi claimed presence of pesticide residues such as DDT, Malathion, chlorpyrifos and lindane in the aerated waters used by Coca Cola to prepare its soft drinks. The residues were 30 times more than the European Union’s regulated levels. Coca-Cola in its response evoke objectivity by saying that its plant water filters were designed to remove potential contaminants and its brands were tested for pesticides to ensure that they met minimum health standards prior to distribution (Coca Cola, 2006). In this case, the test for pesticides in the soft drinks show appeal to objectivity enabled by the technology in which the knowledge of the presence of pesticide residues are taken to be true because the results of the test can be accessed by some of the 5 senses and can also be measured. This shows how technology helps to maintain objectivity in its operations. Coca Cola had to objectively listen to the allegations and respond in the same way it listened. However, the ethical concern in this is the fact that eh company applied discriminatory approaches in which it failed to adhere to the same standards in developing countries as those in the industrialized countries. Standards are supposed to be universal regardless of whether or not the developing countries enforce these standards or not (Tichy & McGill, 2003). This should be done so as to safeguard the health of the consumers. At the end of the day it is the consumer's wellbeing that has to matter and not the profit margins. Any company that ignores standards simply because the government is not watching thereby threatening the lives of the consumers lacks ethics. Worse so is the fact that the company continued advertising the drinking knowing well that it contained some substances which could harm the consumers. The question that remains at the end of the day is how a multinational market leader that is aware of quality standards ends up producing products unfit for human consumptions? This is quite unethical.
It has never occurred before that competition and integrity would at any point conflict. Actually, the two will never conflict (Solomon, 1992). If anything, the two can work to your advantage provided you get devoted to one; ethical integrity. Most people believe that it is not possible to maintain ethical integrity and maintain a profit margin feared by competitors. They think that ethical integrity and a competitive edge in market are mutually exclusive. They are all wrong. The two are complimentary and can augment each other in a way that can bring forth beautiful results. It is not automatic that to succeed in business you have to be somehow corrupt. There are those honest businessmen who have posted great profit margins based on their ethical integrity. The benefits of embracing ethical integrity especially in business are far reaching as compared to the alleged benefit of shelving it in the hope to make profits and maintain competitive edge (Benjamin, 1990).
Inasmuch as ethical integrity is about what we say and intend, it is more of what we do than anything else. There must be consistence in ethical principle and ethical practice for one to be seen as embracing ethical integrity. The foregoing statement simply tries to prove the fact that ethical integrity is the central measure of character at any level of humanity: whether rich or poor, white or black, tall or short, fat or slim; ethical integrity accurately measures character. Therefore, when one’s character needs to be assessed then one needs not go far than looking for the ethical component in the thoughts, words and above all the actions of that person.
It is for this reason that all businessmen are supposed to walk the talk and act the ethical integrity they profess. If you profess ethical integrity and act otherwise, then that is hypocrisy and soon or later people are going to notice and the profits you were protecting so much by pretending will fly away once people realize that it was all a facade. True ethical integrity offers genuine permanent benefits. Most argue that they betray ethics and morality to protect profits but it is now clear that profits in business and ethical integrity are not mutually exclusive making their argument vague. This is only an excuse used by rogue and selfish businessmen so as to support their otherwise misinformed and corrupt interests. There is no way that human dignity, rights or even life can be sold for business profits and then you claim that there is no way ethical integrity can be maintained and make profits at the same time. This is a defense mechanism called rationalization where one tries to justify his/her unbecoming demeanor by offering logical, rational and plausible excuses or reasons or both.
Therefore, it is responsibility of Coca Cola in India to stick to the ideals it promises in its corporate communications and ensure that the promise of quality and adherence of standards is achieved. The solutions to this problem would have been the fact that Coca-Cola apologizes to the public and ensure that the pesticide elements found in the drinks are got rid of. This would have been better that just keeping quiet. In advertisement, it is the responsibility of the company to ensure that the information given to the consumers is precise and based on hard verifiable facts. It is ethically wrong when a company as big as Coca Cola gives misleading information to its consumers and knowingly sells to consumers, products that threaten their health. A market leader such as Coca Cola India is expected to embrace ethical integrity because it has been proven beyond reasonable doubt that it is possible to have an edge in market and still maintain subscription to ethical integrity (Solomon, 1992). As such, market leadership is not mutually exclusive with ethical integrity. In fact that two must should and must be complimentary.

References:
Benjamin M, (1990): Splitting the Difference: Compromise and Integrity in Ethics and Politics, Lawrence University Press of Kansas, pp224-225

Coca-Cola website, 2006: Coca-Cola Addresses Allegations Made about Our Business in India. Retrieved October 6th 2009 from http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http://www.coca-colaindia.com/faqs/myths-facts.asp

Hatch, 2006: Organization Theory: Modern, symbolic, and postmodern perspectives, 2nd Edition, Oxford University Press

Solomon R C, (1992): Ethics and excellence: cooperation and integrity in business, Oxford University Press, pp70-73

Tichy, N M & McGill A R, (2003): The ethical challenge: how to lead with unyielding integrity, John Wiley and Sons, pp121-125
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