The Hindu Business Line : The row over baby oil

THE MAHARASHTRA FOOD and Drug Administration has objected to the consumer care and drug maker, Johnson & Johnson using the word `baby' in marketing the oil intended for infants, and wants the latter to remove the word from the product label. The occasional example of regulatory enthusiasm that one gets to see, as in the instant case, should go some way towards dispelling the public suspicion of a complicit, cosy relationship between the regulator and the regulated in all facets of commercial activity. Even so, one cannot help wonder if the administration has acted more in exuberance than out of regulatory conviction in demanding that the company remove the offending `baby' label from its skin-care product, which contains liquid paraffin. The Government's case rests on a consumer's complaint that his child developed skin rash after application of the oil.

The Government might possibly have a case in concluding that the oil was indeed the offending substance. But having chosen to go public with its finding, it should, in all fairness, have taken the consumers into confidence about whether it had ruled out every other explanation for skin eruption in the reported case, or if paraffin oil could cause such reactions in each and every child across different climatic conditions, and so on. If there is an elaborate process for validating the claims of curative and efficacious properties in new drugs and cosmetics before they are introduced into the market, there should be an equally elaborate procedure for rejecting those claims. Anything less would raise doubts in the public mind about whether there is at all a stringent process in the grant of approval in the first place.

The drug administration must also clarify why it considers that the word `baby' connotes only a certain user segment (babies) and not certain attributes of skin texture in adult users. If the product caters to a section of the adult population with such aspirations, why limit its appeal by forcing the company to drop all references to the word `baby' in the label or promotional material? In the name of preventing misbranding and mislabelling, the creative instincts of the manufacturer in making a pitch for his products to the widest pool of potential consumers should not be restricted in any way. Marketing literature is replete with instances of products appealing to consumer segments vastly different from the ones intended by the marketers themselves. The truth is that `values' are perceived by consumers in ways companies and marketing professionals may not even have imagined in their wildest dreams. Neither, for that matter, need the `values' touted by companies for their products be accepted in the market place. If consumers had unquestioningly accepted all claims made by marketers, there would have been no product failures at all! An over-zealous approach to consumer protection could be a dampener on the scale of commercial activity in an economy.

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