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IPB to Dispute Ruling Forcing It to Name Bad Brands
Eddy Pratama | May 19, 2011

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The Bogor Institute of Agriculture filed legal documents on Wednesday requesting a review of a Supreme Court ruling that ordered it to reveal the names of tainted infant formula brands.

Edward Arfa, a lawyer for the university known as IPB, argued the Supreme Court judges had made a mistake in delivering their verdict and that the publication order possessed no coercive power.

The row stems from an IPB study conducted between 2003 and 2006. It found that five out of 22 brands of formula milk it had tested were contaminated with the potentially deadly Enterobacter sakazakii bacterium.

In high dosages, the bacteria is known to cause diarrhea and even meningitis in newborn babies. An untreated infection can result in death.

In its verdict issued in April 2010, the Supreme Court ordered the Health Ministry, the Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM) and the IPB to name the brands. The three bodies refused, stating the study was only intended as educational research.

Edward said the court had wrongly interpreted the study as intended for “surveillance,” while in fact the study used random samples as it was meant solely for academic purposes.

“The IPB cannot be forced to publish the study results because such an obligation doesn’t apply to educational institutions,” he told reporters when registering the request with the Central Jakarta District Court.

Demands for case reviews are filed at the court where the case was first heard.

The refusal of the IPB and the Health Ministry to make the findings public prompted consumer advocate lawyer David Tobing to file a suit against them.

David argued the public needed to be informed about the brands that could endanger the health of their infants.

The Ministry has argued that it was not privy to the result of the IPB research and had no authority to force the institution to make the results public.

David won the case at the appeals stage at the Supreme Court, but the groups have refused to comply with the ruling.

The Attorney General’s Office has said that as the counsel for the state, including the Health Ministry, it would mount a legal challenge to attempts to reveal the tainted infant formula brands.