Pushing.

In early summer of 1999, there was a strange incident in Belgium.

Products had been taken back from the market when it happened, but obviously it was already a bit too late.

It began at a secondary school in a little town called Bornem, just outside Antwerp.

A group of students got sick.

Abdominal distress, headaches, nausea, trembling dizziness, dozens of kids in the first wave, all ended up in the hospital.

And the only commonality was that they had been eating together, but each had eaten their own sandwiches, so there was no possibility of a food-borne problem.

That's Benoit Nemmering.

He's a medical toxicologist at the University of Lovit.

He was part of the group that investigated the outbreak among the students.

The only thing that they had in common is that they had drunk Coca-Cola from bottles, from a crate.

And allegedly there was a strange odor in the Coke.

And then the school teachers went in the different classrooms, asking if anybody was feeling well and drunk Coca-Cola, which of course made sense at the time.

But that led a few more children to report sick, to be taken to hospital.

The story went national. The evening news was a montage of ambulances and worried parents.

The next day, four more schools reported outbreaks.

I mean, it was really a state of panic.

Every single Coca-Cola product in Belgium was pulled from the shells and destroyed.

30 million cans and bottles. The largest recall in Coca-Cola history. The company was in crisis. The stock price plummeted.

I was transfixed by the Belgian Coke crisis.

Not because I had any special interest in Coca-Cola or Belgium.

But because the whole affair reminded me of another panic.

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