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Sachet in a lemonade bottle! MNC sees spurious soft drink racket

The next time you go for a bottled lemonade produced by a multinational to quench your thirst, you can well expect a cough syrup sachet to heal your throat.

The unopened bottle of a popular brand of transparent lemonade, in which a sachet could be seen floating, was displayed at a press conference in Madras today by R Desikan, trustee of the Centre for Consumer Research, Teaching, Training and Testing, a city-based consumer group.

He said the 300 ml mega bottle was found in a crate purchased from a retail outlet at the southern suburb of Tiruvanmiyur.

He said when he brought this to the attention of top executives of the multinational, they said it could be a spurious lemonade put into their branded bottle. The multinational, according to them, could not assume responsibility for spurious soft drinks.

Desikan said the firm, in the interest of the consumers, ought to take responsibility for eradicating spurious soft drinks under its brands, if any. Otherwise, it would only amount to a betrayal of the brand loyalty of the consumers, he added.

He said it was possible that the sachet, accidentally put in by a consumer, was not removed before refilling. In any case, the consumer group would send the contents of the bottle for testing to a public laboratory and publish the results, he added.

UNI

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