COURT RULING ON MARKETING SODA TO CHILDREN
By Ross Getman, www.colombia.indymedia.org

Q&A on India court ruling ording inquiry on unhealthfulness of soda, particularly as to children. It is adapted from "A Toxic Brew" by Prashant Bhushan, one of the public interest lawyers who filed the Petition in New Delhi.

In New Delhi, the Supreme Court on Monday directed that an inquiry be conducted on whether carbonated colas should be sold to children. The Court issued the notice on a petition by the Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL). CPIL argued that the government has a duty to protect the life of citizens, but that no action had been taken despite repeated research findings that soft drink contents were harmful, especially to children.

Q: Why did you feel that resort to the Courts was necessary under India's public interest law?

A: The indifferent attitude of the authorities to the health hazards posed by soft drinks lays bare the effectiveness with which lobbies of the processed food industries work with government authorities, not just in India but in many parts of the world. Just one recent example should be sufficient to illustrate the remarkable hold of soft drink companies over governments.

Recently, for the first time, the WHO released a draft report suggesting that the consumption of soft drinks are a major cause of obesity in the west, a finding which could hardly be controverted, given the fact that almost 1/3 of the consumption of sugar and 10% of the total calorie intake of persons in the U.S. comes from soft drinks. Yet such is the influence of this 60 Billion-Dollar industry over the US government that the government objected to even this report, saying that, "insufficient evidence to conclude a causal link between soft drinks consumption and weight gain exists". It demanded that the offending words be "deleted or significantly revised".

Given the alarming results of the various studies that have been done to document the health hazards of soft drinks, one is forced to conclude that lack of government action to curb its consumption must be the result of organized lobbying and influence peddling by this industry. Consider the known facts about the poisonous brew that we are allowing young children to guzzle down their throats by the litres.

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