Amidst renewed allegations of malicious business practices against 'a key competitor' as well as new accusations alleging misconduct by the Consumer Affairs Authority (CAA), Edna Chocolates Ceylon Ltd began the long journey to recapture consumer confidence with a formal announcement that the company's Colombo High Court case had been finally resolved and that Edna products were back on the shelves.
This follows a Colombo High Court final order on November 21 'clearing' all Edna products of Melamine contamination.
After enduring three months of lost turnover amounting to Rs. 750 million and an as-yet undetermined erosion to the brand's 41% estimated market share, it was the incalculable loss of trust earned by Edna over 50 years that would prove to be most harmful to the company, according to the company's General Manager - Sales & Marketing, Thusitha Wijesinghe.
He told a press conference that Edna would no longer use Chinese milk powder and has already started importing from New Zealand and Australia.
In the meantime, inventory taken off the shelves would not be destroyed but, instead, put back on shelves and sold as per the Colombo High Court final order. Additionally, Mr. Wijesinghe also indicated that Edna is still undecided regarding legal proceedings against the CAA for their alleged mishandling of the situation, and points out that the CAA filed action against Edna and started removing products off store shelves even before lab reports could conclusively prove Melamine contamination.
There exists however one solitary, but key, piece of evidence that can still not be conclusively refuted: A report, commissioned by the CAA and issued by Singaporean private lab ALS, which indicated findings of 1.5 parts per million (ppm) Melamine content. Although this report is virtually avalanched by an exhaustive panel of more than 40 additional reports by Chinese (SGS), Indian (SGS), Singaporean (Health Science Authority) and Sri Lankan (Industrial Technical Institute) labs, including several other reports also generated by ALS, all of which indicated 'no detectable' Melamine content, its existence keeps certain key issues alive: Which batch did that positive sample belong to? How can it be proven that the same batch was tested again? Was the reading a false positive? And so on.
Although Edna has taken great pains to point out that 1.5 ppm is not a significant outcome, indicating that the U.S. Food & Drug Administration / World Health Organisation safety threshold for Melamine is 2.5 ppm and that the Chinese products which cause so much harm to children had a Melamine content as high as 300 ppm, there are some countries, for instance Japan, that specify Melamine content below 1 ppm or even at zero for food products, particularly those sold to children, according to health industry analysts.
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