A lesson from Nestle's Maggi quicksand

Nestle's troubles with Maggi will offer many lessons for management classes when they research the sordid happenings.  Food inspectors pick up food products from the marketplace and send them for testing in a government laboratory.  The numbers produced by the laboratory do not match the claims on the label and the s--t hits the fan.  That is put very simply.  As subsequent events have shown, maybe Nestle was judged too harshly and too quickly.  Maybe the laboratory was not up to the task of making the measurements that were used to damn Nestle.  Maybe there was not enough expertise within the regulatory authority to make coherent sense of the test results.  Maybe, maybe, maybe....

If there is one cardinal lesson from this mishap it is this - that Government regulators must have sophisticated and technologically capable expertise and facilities to go after the real culprits.  Anything falling short of this ideal will lead to a Nestle like situation happening again - what we know so far suggests that Nestle was innocent.

Perhaps more important is the possibility that corporates will step in where the regulators fear to tread - i.e. occupy the seat that the regulator should justifiably be in and start dictating standards and policies for the nation in a subtle manner.  Take for example Coke's unabashed sponsorship of the Global Energy Balance Network which has been accused of shifting the blame for the rising epidemic of obesity from sugary beverages to lack of exercise.  Whether this accusation holds or not it is clear that the involvement of Coke in sponsoring this organization is poor judgement.  Kellogg has sponsored events promoting the healthfulness of the breakfast habit - the self-interest is transparent here to most of us.  

We do not have visible examples of corporate sponsorship driving the national nutrition agenda in India.  But it is inevitable, given the attenuated funding and capabilities of independent academic science on this topic.  This should be a much greater worry for us and perhaps the most important message from the Nestle episode.  Government funded independent academic science has to be strengthened in key areas of public health policy so that corporate interests do not hijack the agenda.  Independent (unbiased) academic and publicly funded science has to be strong enough to stand up to well funded corporate interests.