The street fight

Three years have passed since the day we released our first study on pesticides. The government reduced excise duty on soft drinks in this year's budget.

The market is looking up. But the standards recommended were blocked by powerful interests in the government. The CSE team presents the inside story

Our world changed a little when we published the study on pesticide residues in soft drinks. In the work we do, fights go with the territory. We need to challenge institutions -- government and private -- in the public interest. What we had not anticipated, however, was the sheer power and the virulence of the attack. The fact is that the two companies affected -- Coca-Cola and PepsiCo -- were incidental to our story on pesticide contamination and the need for food standards to regulate safety. The fact that two us multinationals were involved was a mere coincidence. But not for them.

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