January 14, 2008
 

Still unsafe

Without standards for pesticide residues in colas, soft drinks remain unclean, says CSE in its initial response to the TERI report, ‘Independent third party assessment of Coca-Cola facilities in India’, released today

The TERI report ‘Independent third party assessment of Coca-Cola facilities in India’ cannot be used to give the cola companies a clean chit on pesticide residues. TERI has not tested the final product, which we drink. The CSE study in 2003 and 2006 tested bottles of colas and found pesticides above safe limits in the drinks. This test has been repeated by the N K Ganguly committee of the Union health ministry, which has also confirmed the presence of pesticides in the bottles sold in the market.

TERI, in its report, has tested raw water and input water in a few selected plants of Coca Cola company. The TERI tests also find pesticide residues in the ground water, which clearly suggests that the problem of contamination is real and needs to be addressed. It is precisely for this reason that CSE has demanded the setting up of pesticide residue standards to ensure the safety of the final product.

It is surprising that the government has still not issued the standards for pesticide residues in the final product. It will be recalled that CSE had released its first study in 2003. As a result of this, in 2004, the Joint Parliamentary Committee report had recommended the need to set up safety standards for soft drinks. By 2006, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) had finalised the standards but these were not notified because of the pressure of companies. After the August 2006 release of the CSE study, which re-confirmed the presence of pesticides in the final product, the government informed the Parliament that it would finalise the standards for soft drinks by January 2007. Now, over a year later, the standards are still shuffling between different committees and sub-committees. The Union health ministry is succumbing to pressure to find every possible reason to delay and prevaricate the setting up of safety standards for colas.

The report also brings out the fact that plants are situated in acutely water-stressed areas and that adequate safeguards were not taken by the company while siting the plant. In most cases, the report finds that the company could not supply environment impact assessment reports, which would explain how the decision for setting up the plant in these water-starved areas was taken. This clearly explains the anger of local communities regarding the extraction of groundwater for beverages, which is adding to shortages of water in the area.

Furthermore, in some plants, the report concedes that the company was not meeting the mandatory wastewater discharge standards of the pollution control board.

In this situation, this ‘rush’ by the cola company to get a clean chit will discount our health and compromise our safety.

CSE, January 14, 2008