Cognitive Conga: a blog

Despite growing up in England, I'm not fond of many English drinks. The school canteens, vending machines, newsagents, mini-supermarkets and pubs at which, in my youth, I sought refreshment typically offered no healthy options except overpriced still mineral water. The fruit juice was thin and sharply acidic and everything else was carbonated (bad for the teeth, because of carbonic acid), sugary (also, obviously, bad for the teeth - but also very high-GI), loaded with dubious artificial sweeteners like aspartame (laxatives; possible carcinogens; and more's the point, an unnecessary industrial adulterant), or some combination of these. In the US, on the other hand, it was easy to buy fresh drinks with wholly natural ingredients: horchata, for instance, or fruit smoothies. I longed for these to be available in the UK. They're delicious, affordable, hydrating, nutritive, and have, if I'm not mistaken, a lower GI than conventional sugary soft drinks.

As for hot drinks and alcoholic ones: the former tend to burn my tongue, waste prodigious quantities of energy, usually contain caffeine I neither need nor want, and often contain pesticide residues; and the latter, while nice to have a little of occasionally, are hardly a sensible choice for daily rehydration.

So when P&J Smoothies, and then Innocent Smoothies, started to become available from supermarkets, and other food sellers in the UK, I was thrilled. At last, I could set out to buy a drink at a local shop with enthusiasm!

But the honeymoon's over now. I've just heard that Innocent has sold a £30m stake to Coca-Cola, a company I loathe not only for its mostly worthless products and brainwashing advertising campaigns but also for its serious failures to take life-and-death corporate social responsibility seriously. These failures have been reported on in the better newspapers at various times over the last few years, so ignorance of them isn't a terribly convincing excuse. Moreover, the investigative activist comedian Mark Thomas has written a fairly comprehensive book on the subject, and he's written to one of Innocent's co-founders, asking him to reconsider the sale, so Innocent really can't claim to be acting innocently: they have the facts before them. Yet the deal has not, it seems, been reconsidered.

Consequently, I plan to extend my boycott of Coke to Innocent. While this might reduce my options next time I'm at the chill cabinet, my conscience will be easier for it, and some Colombian trade unionists and Indian farmers might also sleep a tiny bit better at night.

I wrote a quick email to Innocent to let them know:

Dear Adam, Jon and Richard,

Despite being in many ways a clone of P&J, which I think might have been first to the (super)market in the UK, Innocent won my affection by providing delicious fresh fruit smoothies and challenging the previously dire state of the UK soft drinks market. One of the reasons the drinks market was so dire in the first place was due to the hegemony of a few unimaginitive companies and their unhealthy products: Smithkline, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo et al.

Now, with £30m of Coca-Cola's (partly criminally earned) riches in your pockets, you're sleeping with the enemy, in my opinion. Innocent was successful already, and solvent too, as far as I can tell, so I don't think you needed the money. That being so, it would have behooved you to refuse it.

Mark Thomas has already written to you to explain why Coca-Cola is not a corporation to be trusted, and much one less to promote or support in any fashion.

So bye-bye, Innocent, I'll be missing your innocence.

Here are Mark's messages to Innocent, which I've copied - hoping he won't mind; I'll take them down if he asks me to - from his website since they aren't directly linkable.

Mark's [first] message to Innocent

Mark's response to Innocent who are apparently an ethical company but have now received a £30 Million investment from Coca Cola who are probably not an ethical company:

Hi Richard,

I just wanted to drop you a note regarding your new found partnership with Coca Cola. An acquaintance mailed you earlier today and passed your response on to me. There are some fundamental factual inaccuracies and ignorance in your reply. You wrote:

As a business, Coke are definitely not perfect (although it is worth saying that independent judicial enquiries at the time found that the Columbia (sic) allegations to be unfounded, the same with India water although I am nervous about saying these things as it makes it sound like I am here to represent Coke, which I am not). But they do show a relatively good track record in learning and making good on the things they get things wrong. And the people we've met have been decent, ordinary folk.

The allegations against Coca Cola in Colombia are simple: trade unionists working for the company have been intimidated and murdered, in one case Isidro Segundo Gil was killed inside the plant, virtually under the Coca Cola logo, to this day Coca Cola have not had any independent investigation into the allegation that managers of the bottling plants in Colombia colluded with or directed the para military death squads. The murders happened over 12 years ago.

Your response states that independent judicial enquiries at the time found that the Colombia allegations to be unfounded, What independent judicial enquiries are you referring to? The Colombian judicial system has managed to investigate, prosecute and convict about 1% of the trade unionist murders, out of thousands. So any investigations conducted in Columbia are hardly independent and barely qualify as enquiries.

Or do you refer to the USA court case? Here the Alien Tort Claims Act is being used to try and get the Colombian bottlers and the parent company in the dock. But it can't be that one as initially the case was found to be inadmissible (though it is being appealed), so this is obviously not the 'independent judicial enquiries' that you refer to, is it?

So what independent judicial enquiries are you referring to?

You do not mention the fact that the Coca Cola Company tried to silence the Colombian trade unionists who brought the case against them in the USA. Coke offered to settle out of court to the tune of about $13 million on condition that they give up their jobs working in the Coke bottling plants and that the trade unionists never ever criticise Coke nor any other company that work with Coke in the future. Had the trade unionists signed and taken the $13 million they would break the terms of the settlement and be liable to court action if they criticised you Richard.

Neither do you mention the trade union busting of the company bottlers. The cases of Coke plant managers falsifying evidence against trade unionists, accusing them of terrorism. resulting in innocent men wrongly imprisoned for 6 months before the charges against them being dismissed.

You do not mention the fact that over some 15 years the company bottlers have gone from about 80% of the work force being in permanent employment with 20% casual labour to the situation we now find, where 20% of the work force is permanent and 80% casualised with no rights to even join a trade union.

Richard, I have spent some time in Colombia interviewing and taking testimony from people who witnessed Isidro Segundo Gil's murder to the delivery men who are not allowed to join a union. I am happy for you to have all of these interviews and for you to review them and see for yourself. I can even put you in touch with the people themselves , so if you wish you can visit Colombia and talk to them face to face, I think you would find them decent ordinary folk.

And so onto India, there are many stories here but let us stay with the stories about the Company opening plants (in a water intensive industry) in water sensitive areas with with little or no regard for the communities who find their water compromised and depleted. Once again you say independent judicial enquiries have found claims unfounded. Once again I ask what independent judicial enquiries?

Firstly there are four plants where Cokes operations have put the local community water in danger, in Kerala, near Jaipur and two in Uttra Pradesh. Two of these four plants have been shut down after protests and legal challenges. Coke were forced to close these plants.

The two remaining plants are near Jaipur and near Varanasi, neither plants have had judicial enquiries that found any claims of water depletion unfounded. So I am at a loss as to what judicial enquiries you refer to.

Happily for you Richard I have spent time in India too, and am happy for you to have access to all the interviews I have conducted with local people from all four of the plants, so you can hear for yourself what the allegations are.

Richard, you fail to mention the allegations that are raised against the company in Turkey regarding union busting or in El Salvador regarding Coke's sugar being produced with the help of child labour. Neither do you refer to the allegations of union busting in Ireland or the court findings against the company in Mexico, where they were found to be in breech of anti-monopoly law and intimidated some of the poorest shop owners.

So I am happy to send you a copy of my book which details some of these things BUT more importantly I offer to make my research and interviews on all of these issues available for you to come and peruse , so you might be able to make a more balanced comment on your partnership with the company. I do not understand how you can make comments that Coke have a relatively good track record in learning and making good on the things they get things wrong without considering these points.

Yours, Mark Thomas

Additional response:

Dear Richard, just seen another reply you have made to an enquiry about Smoothie and Coke, you quote the ILO report made in 2008 - referring to direct employees. You say everything suggests that conditions of work and rights applicable to direct employees [in Columbia (sic)] are duly respected. The key here is that over 15 years the ratio of direct employment to casual labour has been reversed, from 80% of the workforce that was 'direct' labour and 20% that was casualised, to the present day where 20% of the work force is direct labour and 80% is casualised. Casual labour have no rights to join a trade union. None whatsoever, I met and talked to plenty of people who testified that this is the case.

So your quote is selective and deceptive that is being used to promote a vision of the company that is simply not true. once again I am happy for you to come and see the interviews and bring your own translator if you wish to go through what these men and women say about working for the company.

Looking forward to hearing from you. Mark Thomas

UPDATE: I've had a reply from Innocent (I'm not sure if MT had one too, or not). Frankly, Innocent's reply smells of whitewash. It fails to substantively address the serious concerns people have about Coca-Cola's ethics and Innocent's implicit endorsement of them. Still, since I'm more inclined to fairness than, Coca-Cola is (not difficult!), I'll publish a copy of it below, so that readers of this post can see both sides of the correspondence (although again, I'll take it down if requested to):

Hello Sam,

Thanks for your e-mail.

We're sorry to hear you're unhappy with Coca-Cola becoming a minority investor in innocent, and just want you to know that we really respect your opinion, and are gutted to hear we'll be losing you as a customer - can we just say thank you for all your support in the past.

It's important for us to stress they are just a minority stakeholder (between 10-20%). We are still a standalone company, and Richard, Jon and Adam (the three founders of innocent) will still continue to lead and manage the company just as they always have done. We are not changing - so all those things you liked about us will still be here. In fact, one of the main reasons we chose Coca Cola as our investor is because they were the only investor that promised a completely hands off approach - allowing us to continue running the business in the way we always have done.

You may be interested to know that all of the money raised is going into the business (none is being paid out to the shareholders) and the funds raised will allow us to do more of the things we're here to do - getting natural, healthy drinks and food to as many as possible, pioneering the use of better socially and environmentally aware ingredients, packaging and production techniques and supporting charities in the countries where our fruit comes from. All of this remains very much in place.

If you haven't already, it may be worth having a look at the letter from Richard, Jon and Adam here, which outlines what's happened, just so you have the full story. http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/a-letter-from-the-founders/

Thanks again for taking the time to get in touch. Before we go we would just like to say this (without, we hope, angering you in any way): if you've trusted us in the past, and always liked what we've done, please keep your faith for the future, as we don't plan on changing. I joined this company because it represented an ethical, human approach to business that I massively admired, and I honestly don't see that approach changing - after all, a company is no more than the product of the people who work for and lead it and we're all still here. We needed an injection of cash to survive and grow at a time when many businesses - small and large - are struggling, and we got this from Coca Cola. However, this does not in any way change who we are, or what we're about.

All the best,

Joe

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 at 5:22 pm and is filed under Ethics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.