Coca-Cola, Pepsi remain as unsafe as before: CSE

New Delhi, Sep 23: Describing as 'unfortunate' the Kerala High Court's decision to set aside the ban imposed on production and sale of Coca-Cola and Pepsi in the state, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has said without notifying safety norms, the drinks remained as unsafe as before.

''The government has still not notified the safety norms and without these, the drinks remain as unsafe as before,'' Sunita Narain director, CSE, said in her reaction to yesterday's judgment.

Ms Narain said in August 2006, CSE had released its study on soft drink brands sold across India, in which it had reported that all the samples tested by it contained levels of pesticide residues much beyond the standard finalised (but not notified) by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS).

''CSE had said that there was collusion between the government and the soft drink industry, because of which this standard had not been notified. In fact, it had released a letter from the secretary for consumer affairs which clearly points to this collusion. Since then, the Union health minister has informed the Parliament that the norms will be notified - without indicating any time frame for doing the same,''she said.

On the High Court's argument that under the current law, only the Central government is empowered to ban any food product, the CSE said,''The problem is that the Central government has not set up the regulations, which would ensure that these drinks are safe. In the absence of this regulation, the states have no option but to impose bans to protect the health of their citizens.'' On the court reportedly saying the ban must be set aside because it is based on the report of a non-governmental organisation and not the government, Ms Narain said,''this again is unfortunate as it must be noted that the Union government has still not made public its reports on the pesticide residues in these drinks.

On August 22, Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss had said in Parliament that his government had tested two bottles of soft drinks and found no residues in them -- on the basis of which he had reportedly given a clean chit to these products.

But the government has never made this report public.'' The health minister had, on the other hand, released the report of its expert committee commenting on the CSE study.

In this report, the points raised against the CSE study were copied verbatim from the report of Coca-Cola sponsored study by the UK-based Central Science Laboratory. Since then, CSE has issued a point-by-point rebuttal to the health minister and his expert committee's 'junk science', Ms Narain said.

UNI

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