A top official of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd (GCMMF) has termed a case filed by Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) over the former’s ice-cream ad “a collective conspiracy” of for-profit companies against the country’s milk producers.
GCMMF, which sells ice-cream and other milk products under the Amul brand, ran television ads differentiating its milk-based ice creams from ‘frozen desserts’, which it said its rivals were selling under the ‘ice-cream’ category.
HUL and Ahmedabad-based Vadilal filed a case in the Bombay High Court, seeking withdrawal of the ad.
“We have received a legal notice from HUL regarding our latest ad,” RS Sodhi, MD of GCMMF, told media persons here. “However, we have done no wrong. Our ad doesn’t name any specific brand or company. Our intention is to make consumers aware about milk-based ice-cream and vegetable oil-based frozen desserts sold under the impression of ice-cream.”
The petitioner companies are in “a collective conspiracy” against the milk producers of the country, Sodhi added. “They use vegetable fat costing ₹60-70 per kg for frozen dessert whereas dairy fat, which is used for ice-cream, costs ₹400 per kg. By using low-cost ingredients, these companies are misleading consumers looking for real ice-cream,” he said.
Under FSSAI norms, ice-cream must be manufactured using only dairy ingredients as raw material, he pointed out.
This is not the first time HUL had objected to Amul’s awareness campaign. In October 2016, the multinational had approached the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), seeking to stop such a move by Amul. However, the ASCI order favoured Amul.
Sodhi further added the milk cooperative will soon initiate a similar awareness campaign about cheese. “We had done campaigns on pure ghee versus vegetable ghee dalda, butter versus margarine and now we are planning similar awareness campaigns against the cheese-like products confusing the consumers with real cheese.”