Vitasoy's clean sweep

BY next week, Vitasoy lovers are likely to see their beloved soya milk back on the shelves and the company will fervently hope never to see another couple of months like those that have just passed.

Forty-three million packs of Vitasoy drinks await destruction and the company is counting the total cost - estimated to be at least $100 million - of withdrawing them from the market. But was it all necessary? 'I think it was absolutely correct,' said Hong Kong Polytechnic University assistant professor of management, Mary Lee. 'I'm going to use it right away as an illustration [in my courses] of the dedication and enormous care that should go into the production line and the enormous responsibility that companies have to their customers.' Instead of trying to 'get away with it', the firm had faced the problems and dealt with them, she said.

But independent consultant, trouble-shooter and food microbiologist, Dr Irene von Bockelmann, called into the plant to find the cause of the troubles that led to a suspension of production on January, said: 'I think the company may have over-reacted. I would have recommended a limited recall.' Others have pointed out the huge waste of nutritious protein contained in the drinks.

Despite all the fuss, throughout the whole saga there have only been nine complaints from consumers of sour malt and plain soya milk drinks - milk that had gone off, in the natural way that biological products sometimes do.

The sourness was foul-tasting, but tests before the recall quickly determined that it would not cause any disease - and as one observer put it, anyone who drank a whole carton of milk that was off had to be a fool.

And the company's products other than soya milk - the fruit juices and teas - were never at risk. Even before the recall was announced, the company knew that the bugs could not breed in the high-acid conditions of those drinks. Yet the company has removed them all and will throw them all away.