Criticism
The Coca-Cola Company has been involved in controversies and lawsuits related to human rights violations and other unethical practices.
A number of lawsuits have been filed in relation to its allegedly monopolistic and discriminatory practices, some of which have been dismissed, some of which have caused The Coca-Cola Company to change its business practices, and some of which have been settled out of court. There have been continuing criticisms regarding The Coca-Cola Company's relation to the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy.
The company has been criticised on a number of environmental issues. An issue with pesticides in groundwater in 2003 led to problems for the company when an Indian NGO, Centre for Science and Environment, announced that it had found cancer causing chemicals in Coca-Cola as well as other soft drinks produced by the company, at levels 30 times that considered safe by the European Economic Commission. This caused an 11 percent drop in Indian Coca-Cola sales. The Indian Health Minister said the CSE tests were inaccurate, and said that the government's tests found pesticide levels within India's standards but above EU standards. The UK-based Central Science Laboratory, commissioned by Coke, found its products met EU standards in 2006. Coke and the University of Michigan commissioned an independent study of its bottling plants by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), which reported in 2008 no unsafe chemicals in the water supply, though it criticized Coke for the impact of its water usage on local supply.
Critics claim that the company's overuse of local water supplies in some locations has led to severe shortages for regional farmers and the forced closure of some plants. Packaging used in Coca-Cola's products have a significant environmental impact. However, the company strongly opposes attempts to introduce mechanisms such as container deposit legislation.
The company was accused of being involved in a violent repression of a union at several of its bottling plants in Colombia, South America. As of August 2005, when PBS's Frontline ran a story on the controversy, Coca-Cola strenuously denied all allegations of union-busting and murder of union leaders. A few shareholders and a few U.S. colleges have attempted to boycott Coca-Cola to exert pressure on the company to approve what they call a full-scale investigation of the charges.
On December 10, 2008, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wrote to Mr. Muhtar Kent, President and Chief Executive Officer, to warn him that the FDA had concluded that the label on Coca-Cola's product Diet Coke Plus 20 FL OZ was is in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act labeling requirements. During an interview with Reuters, The Coca-Cola Company's spokesman, Scot Williams, stated, "This does not involve any health or safety issues, and we believe the label on Diet Coke Plus complies with FDA's policies and regulations."
In January 2009, the US consumer group the Center for Science in the Public Interest filed a class-action lawsuit against Coca-Cola. The lawsuit was in regards to claims made, along with the company's flavors, of Vitamin Water. Claims say that the 33 grams of sugar are more harmful than the vitamins and other additives are helpful. Coca-Cola insists the suit is "ridiculous."
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Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I hold with the old-fashioned criticism that Browning is not really a poet, that he has all the gifts but the one needful and the pearls without the string; rather one should say raw nuggets and rough diamonds.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
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—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)