Coca Cola and Pepsi Must Go!



 
People’s Democracy


(Weekly
Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)

Vol.
XXVII

No. 33

August 17,
2003

Peddling
Poison


Coca
Cola and Pepsi Must Go!


Amit
Sen Gupta


 


THE
year: 1970. In the South American country of Chile, Salvador Allende had just
been elected as president but was yet to be confirmed and sworn in
constitutionally. Allende had won in the face of the whole economic might
of US corporations and the US government, who had funded the campaign of his


opponent.
Richard Nixon, then president of the United states received a personal call from
Donald Kendall, Chairman of Pepsi Co. This had not been


difficult to set up, given that Richard Nixon had formerly served the


company as its corporate attorney. Kendall arranged for the owner of the


company’s Chilean bottling operation to meet National Security Adviser
Henry Kissinger on September 15, 1970. Hours later, Nixon called in his CIA
chief, Richard Helms, and,
according to Helms’s handwritten notes, ordered the CIA
to prevent Allende’s inauguration as president of Chile.


 


ASSASSINATION
OF ALLENDE


 

The
CIA swung into action. The nature of its operation can be gauged from


the “Eyes only, restricted handling, secret” message to US station
chief of the CIA, Santiago.
From CIA headquarters on October 16, 1970. The message
said, “It is the firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown
by a


coup…
Please review all your present and possibly new activities to


include propaganda, black operations, surfacing of intelligence or


disinformation, personal contacts, or anything else your imagination can


conjure…” The attempt in 1970 failed as the CIA found it difficult to
sway


the Chilean army. But they persisted, egged on by persistent prompting
from


US multinationals like PepsiCo, ITT (the forerunner of AT&T) and
copper


multinationals.

Finally
in 1973 they engineered the assassination of Allende.
American interests were protected once again and the Chilean people


paid for their “mistake” with more than 15,000 dead, more than 30,000


prisoners, more than 100,000 brutally 
tortured, more than 200,000 dismissed


for political reasons, and more than 30,000 students expelled from the


university by the military that took over.


 


IN
LEAGUE WITH MAFIA IN COLOMBIA


 

Fast
forward to the decade of the nineties. The US is now engaged in


subverting the democratic process in another South American country –


Colombia. And what better ally can they have than another soft drink
giant


— Coca Cola. For almost a decade now Coca Cola has been working closely


with the mafia and
criminal gangs in the country to terrorise its workers.


Since
1996, eight workers and union activists from Coca-Cola plants in


Colombia have been murdered by anti-union paramilitary groups. Managers
of


the
Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia have allowed, and encouraged,


right-wing
paramilitaries and government security forces to threaten,


detain,
kidnap, and murder union activists.


 


Isidro
Segundo Gil was killed inside the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Carepa


by right-wing paramilitaries on December 5, 1996. Isidro was the
president


of the local union, and was involved with negotiations for a new
collective


bargaining agreement with the company. Four days later, the
paramilitaries


entered the plant and gave the union members until 4 P.M. to resign from
the


union. Fifty workers signed identical resignation letters and the local


union was disbanded. Prior to Isidro’s murder, the plant manager
boasted


that he had given an order to the paramilitaries to destroy the union.
The


most recent killing was of Adolfo Munera, who was shot to death in the


doorway of his mother’s house in Barranquilla on August 31, 2002.
Adolfo was


murdered just nine days after the Constitutional Court of Colombia
decided


to review his case against Coca-Cola.


 


CHALLENGING
THE WHO


 

The
year: 2003. The scene shifts to the corridors of the World Health


Organisation headquarters in Geneva. This time Pepsi and Coca Cola are


working in tandem to prevent the publication of a report by the WHO on


unhealthy nutrition. The release of the draft prompts them to threaten
Gro


Harlem Brundtland (then Director General, WHO) in a letter (co authored
by


the sugar and other food multinationals) with the following words: “We
will


use all possible methods to throw light on the questionable character of


this report …Tax payers’ money should not be wasted on supporting


non-scientific surveys”.


 


 

At
the heart of the controversy is the WHO’s report on obesity and


nutrition. The report urges governments to clamp down on TV
advertisements


pushing “sugar-rich items” to impressionable thirsty youngsters and
consider levying heavier taxes on them. It suggests that school vending machines


should be turned into scrap metal. The WHO is concerned about the rising
tide of obesity that is killing and debilitating millions in rich countries


such as the UK and US and that is now edging into poor countries to
co-exist


obscenely with malnutrition. The soft drinks industry, appalled at this
“interference” with its global dominance, disputes not only the scientific
evidence but the WHO’s right even to raise issues of taxes and advertising. 


Pepsi
and Coke received strong support for their stand from an expected


quarter. The US government registered a formal objection to the WHO draft


report, arguing that it had not proved its case. It said the report found


“insufficient evidence to conclude a causal link between soft drinks
consumption and weight gain exists” and demanded that the offending words be


“deleted or significantly revised”.


 


The
above are but a few glimpses from the murky history of the soft drink giants,
Pepsi and Coca Cola. Should we really be surprised when we learn


from a study recently published by the Centre for Science and Environment


(CSE) that they have been serving us soft drinks laced with deadly


pesticides? Let us not
forget that Coca Cola started as a firm that
peddled


drugs!
Till 1906 it is officially acknowledged that their formula contained cocaine.
The two, who today symbolize the “free world” and the “American way


of
life” have for a century carved out an empire by marketing junk that is


bad for health – pesticides
notwithstanding. They have even acquired a


philanthropic
sheen. They fund “social causes” and a member of Coca Cola’s


board
of  directors sits on the board of the Ford Foundation, which appears
to have, in recent years, built a reputation for funding “radical”
causes! 


 

From
drug peddling to philanthropy – it has been a long and eventful


journey!


 


DAMNING
EVIDENCE


 

The
CSE study itself is a damning piece of evidence that suggests corporate


irresponsibility
and double standards. It found that all the
different


brands
sold by these companies—Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Diet Pepsi, Miranda


orange, Miranda lemon, Blue Pepsi, 7-Up, Coca-Cola, Fanta, Limca, Sprite
and


Thums Up—contained the deadly insecticide lindane which damages the


body’s central nervous system and has the potential to induce cancers. 


 

Coca-Cola,
for example, was found to contain lindane in a concentration of


0.0035 milligram per litre—a level which is 35 times higher than the


European Economic Commission (EEC) limit. Similarly, highly toxic DDT


residues, almost 45 times higher than EEC limits, were found in Pepsi’s


Miranda Lemon. Repeated exposure to pesticides such as DDT, malathion and


lindane can cause severe harm, ranging from cancer, liver and kidney
damage,


to birth defects and damage to the immune system. The fact that these p


esticides came from the ground water used in the manufacture of Coke and


Pepsi do not in any way absolve them of responsibility.


 


But
the reaction of the Indian government to the report by the Centre for


Science and Environment (CSE) on pesticide content in Coke and Pepsi
speaks volumes
for its supposed concern for the health of the people. The emphasis


of all the pronouncements have been on testing the soft drinks for
pesticide


content. In other words, if the companies clean up their act, it will be


business as usual. No one seems to be prepared to question the rationale
for


allowing these products in the Indian market in the first place—with or


without pesticides.


 


The
reaction from the liberalisation brigade and their poster boys has been


nauseating. After the study was published, a very familiar anchor in one English
news channel was seen smirking at and hectoring MPs for having dared to ban
Pepsi and Coke from parliament. The same news channel ran a programme


titled:
“Villains or Victims”! Pepsi and Coke as victims should qualify as


the news scoop of the millennium! In most metropolitan newspapers the
story


had vanished from the front page within a couple of days. Big money has


obviously been doing some plain talking! Lest we forget – the Indian soft


drink
industry is worth Rs 6,000 crore, and 85 per cent of the market is controlled by
Pepsi and Coca Cola. They are among the biggest advertisers on Television and in
the print media. We can soon expect to see planted stories appearing on their
behalf in the media.


 


Coke
and Pepsi must go not just because they contain liberal dollops of pesticides.
They must go because of their track record globally and in this country. They
must go because even minus pesticides, they are junk and


harmful for the health of those who consume them.


 


In
India, both these companies have bought acres of prime land to set up their
manufacturing facilities. In Maharashtra and many other regions their operations
have starved the local population of water. Thousands have been agitating
against this practice of the Indian government, which has sold the


water rights of the people to corporates like Pepsi and Coke. Recently
the BBC broke a story that is even more damning. It now transpires that as a
philanthropic gesture, Coke in Kerala had been supplying, free of cost, sludge
from their factory to be used as fertiliser to local farmers. The catch in this
tale of corporate munificence is that this sludge is laced with cadmium, a
deadly poison! The Kerala State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) has confirmed
the presence of the carcinogenic metal cadmium in


waste material generated by the Coca-Cola plant at Plachimada in
Kerala’s Palakkad district. The sludge being supplied to farmers was found to
contain 201.8 mg of cadmium per kg of dry weight, against the tolerable limit of
50


mg. The factory has been asked to stop supplying the sludge as fertiliser
to


farmers
in the locality, and to keep the material in ‘seepage-proof’ conditions.


 


MENACE
TO HEALTH


 

Let
us now turn to something about Coke and Pepsi that is rarely discussed.
Mercifully they do not contain cocaine any more, and one assumes that they do
not deliberately add pesticides. But what they contain is almost as harmful for
health. The first problem is that soft drinks provide no


nutritional value, but
supply “empty” calories – that is just plain sugar (a
bottle
of coke contains the equivalent of 11 teaspoons of sugar).
This is a deadly
combination when consumed by people with sedentary (not active)


lifestyles. Dr Brundtland, while releasing the WHO report on obesity and
nutrition said: “We have known for a long time that foods high in saturated
fats, sugars, and salt, are unhealthy; that we are, globally, increasing our
intake of energy-dense, nutritionally poor food as our lives become


increasingly sedentary ….. And that these factors – together with
tobacco use – are the leading causes of the great surge we have seen in the
incidence of chronic diseases”. Even in the US, there is today a major public
outcry against the promotion of soft drinks. Los Angles, for example, is
proposing to ban soft drink in all schools from 2004.


 


Another
active ingredient in Coke is phosphoric acid. It is highly acidic, with a pH
value of 2.8. It is thus highly corrosive and can dissolve a nail in
about 4 days. One can imagine what that would do
to the teeth of children


who
consume Coke in large quantities. Phosphoric acid also dissolves out


calcium from bones and is a major contributor to the rising increase in
osteoporosis – a disease characterized by thinning of bones that leads to
easy fractures Studies have also implicated phosphoric acid as a causative


agent
of kidney stones.


 


This
then is what the votaries of “free market” want protected. Coke and


Pepsi typify the consumerist culture being promoted in the country today. 


They
must go because they are poisoning a whole generation of children and young
adults. They must go because they ravage the land where it is


produced. They must go because they are symbols of all that is evil in
the


corporate world.