COVER STORY
UNDER PRESSURE
Cast your mind back to 2004.
14 APRIL 2018
In a quiet chemistry lab in Auckland’s Pakuranga
College, two students were about to start
testing various fruit drinks for a joint project.
Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo – just
14-years-old – couldn’t believe the results of one
test, so they did it over and over again before
calling in their teacher to find out what they were
doing wrong.
While testing iconic brand Ribena for its vitamin
C content, the girls discovered that the readyto
drink pre-diluted version of the blackcurrant
drink did not contain four times the vitamin C of
oranges as implied in the product’s advertising.
The girls decided to write to Ribena manufacturer
and global giant GlaxoSmithKline to question what
they considered misleading and inappropriate
product claims, given their study results. What
they couldn’t know at the time was that their
complaint would trigger a sequence of events
leading ultimately to the prosecution, public
Mark Zuckerberg had just
launched Facebook from his
Harvard dormitory bedroom;
Yasser Arafat died; and the
Boxing Day tsunami which killed
230,000 in Asia was still to come.