The Unpalatable Truth- FMCG Ethics…or the lack of it!

Given the current outbreak of controversies with a list of FMCG products, starting with the presence of excessive lead found in samples of the popular Instant Noodles brand ‘Maggi’, the withdrawal of the Chinese range of soups and noodles ‘Knorr’ by Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), the debate on the safety and health standards of Packaged foods and baby products like Cerelac (Read: Fungus found in baby food!), the poor hygiene standards maintained by fast food joints like KFC, Burger King ETC., there would not have been a better time to write about the need for manufacturing and advertising ethics in India.

Undoubtedly over the past few years, there has been a big demand for ‘easy’ food and drinks especially packaged and instant food and drinks. Apart from the periodic revelation (like the famous pesticide-in-cola brouhaha in the year 2006) and hoopla from time to time, a country like ours, where public memory is as short as it can be, big bodies such as HUL, Pepsi and Nestle continue to flourishdespite not meeting safety norms. Safety and hygiene f junk and packaged food is considered to be a First World issue.

Looks like we have justified to ourselves and compromised on our health for the sake of an easy, stress-free, ‘instant’, ‘ready-to-eat’, ‘easy-to-make’ life!

In order to understand what is going wrong, we first need to know what is right!

What is this ethics I am talking about?

Ethical practices involve honouring the beliefs, morals and values of one’s profession and is relevant to all aspects of business conduct (Please Note) and to the organization as a whole. In simple words, Food Product Policy clearly states that the products should be nutritious, hygienic and tasty to the consuming public.

Though these ethical practices involve an array of duties and responsibilities like fair and just employer practices, good and safe environment for workers, fair practices with suppliers, ethics in distribution to wholesalers and retailers, environmental impacts etc., we are only going to address aspects through which a Company is responsible to its customer’s health and safety.

The Maggi soup!

The problem started when the FSDA (Food Safety and Drug Administration) tested a few samples of Maggi on a random basis in Uttar Pradesh only to find higher than permitted levels of monosodium glutamate and lead in them. After coming under the Scanner the U.P FSDA asked Nestle, India to withdraw the batch of the product from the market due to the presence of these non-essential taste enhancers MSG and lead (Seven times the permissible limit. Yes, seven times!).

Having mentioned the above, it is still difficult to ascertain the amount of harm these products can do in the long run. More clarity on the issue will certainly come ones the government weighs in on the matter.

Déjà vu?

A discussion on the Maggi Issue would be incomplete without recalling the infamous controversy over the pesticide content in Cola soft drinks. Though the issue caused a large amount of public fury, the issue soon died down with the sales of the cool drinks picking up once again.

Cadbury India too battled a similar issue when live worms started showing up in the company’s chocolate product. However, the company was quick to investigate the problem and overhauled its packaging procedure to calm the customer’s fears and distrust.

The part of thesecontroversies that deserves some thought is the level popularity of these products. Maggi, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Cerelac and Cadbury are easily perhaps the fastest moving consumer products and to be told (out of the blue)what we are being fed in the name of fancy packaging, catchy advertisementsand mouth-watering products are chemicals, harmful metals and preservatives, is to say the least, shocking! Not surprisingly, the consumers at large are feeling a sense of betrayal from their favourite brands and products with the unfolding of these investigations.

The key strategy for all brands is to provide the consumers with a much stronger incentive to buy their products than is currently the case.

The Maggi Incident raised yet another pertinent question of whether Brand Ambassador of such brands shall be held responsible for promoting such brands without testing the product themselves. As sloppy as the reasoning might be, a Brand Ambassador is held responsible for promoting the products they endorse. Personally, I see it to be a rather unfeasible and bizarre proposition! If we start to prosecute every public figure for "misleading advertising", I doubt there would be anybody left! The inherent problem is not with the exaggeration depicted in the advertisements, but in the quality of the product itself.