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IN RESPONSE to the article "Killing pests or poisoning people?" by Ameer Shahul (Business Line, September 2), Mr Sanjiv Gupta, President and Chief Executive Officer of Coca-Cola India, writes (his response to specific contentions of the author is given in italics):

"The fact remains that the country does not have standard for carbonated water, and that the pesticides level detected in the official analysis is still higher than the European Union standard. Sadly enough, in the absence of any regulatory standards in place, these companies cannot be held responsible."

Subsequent to the CSE report on pesticide residues in carbonated soft drinks (CSD), the CSD samples were picked by government from marketplace and were sent to two reputed labs for further testing. Both the labs shared their findings showing the results were much lower than the CSE findings and were within safety standards for drinking water as given by World Health Organisation (WHO) and local regulations as defined in Prevention of Food Adulteration (PFA) Rules.

Several state governments have tested our product samples in their labs and found them totally safe. The government of Gujarat went to the extent of issuing an official press release, after testing seventeen samples picked up within the State as well as from open markets in adjoining States, stating no pesticides under the organo-chlorine category like lindane, DDT and chloropyrifos were from any of these samples. The two-member Bench of the Mumbai High Court, including the Chief Justice S. J. Vazifdar himself, mentioned in its order that the test reports of seven samples of our brands met both the Indians Standards and the European Economic Community's directive. The Central Science Laboratory, the UK's biggest lab, had certified that our products met the EU standards for individual pesticides in beverages after testing samples sent to them by another news publication, Outlook.

Under the PFA Act, the Government of India prescribes a standard for Carbonated Soft Drink (A01.01, Annex B of PFA Rules, 1955). India also has a standard for drinking water (IS 10500) which also specifies standards for pesticide residues.

World-wide there are no standards for pesticide residues in Carbonated Soft Drinks/Beverages/Processed Foods, the maximum residue limits (MRLs) are attached to primary agricultural commodities which are used as ingredients for manufacture of the food product and the composite MRLs, as set for the ingredient primary agricultural commodity, apply. Rule 65 of PFA Rules 1955 also specifies the MRLs for various agricultural commodities.

The European Union has a directive for drinking water (80/778/EEC) and the same is applied for the water used by any food industry. In the EU, the emphasis is given on reducing the level of contamination of water by pesticides by banning the use of certain toxic pesticides and controlling the use of some of these toxic chemicals thus protecting the water sources. The member states are continuously monitoring the quality of water sources and are working towards this objective since last twenty years and will continue to do so.

"There are good parallels elsewhere in the world when companies faced such brand attacks in a healthy manner. It should have been prudent on the part of the companies to go for a product recall; however expensive it may have been. That is what one tends to think, going by the classic case of Johnson and Johnson's handling of the Tylenol scare in 1982, in which seven people died after taking cyanide-tainted capsules."

There are no similarities between the Tylenol scare and pesticides in soft- drinks because the Tylenol incident was due to consumption of cyanide tainted capsules resulting in seven human deaths, while the present controversy regarding pesticides in soft drinks is only a study published by an NGO with the prime objective of sensationalising the issue without consultation or review with any regulatory authority or toxicological research institute and without any established reports of health impact or consumer concerns. Thus there is no need for the company to go for a product recall.

Thus, the carbonated soft-drinks produced and sold then and now are completely safe for human consumption for an entire lifetime.

It is once again reiterated by the reports from the two reputed Government labs viz. CFTRI, Mysore, and CFL, Calcutta, that the CSE report was not correct and have found the residues well within WHO limits (much lower than CSE results). WHO is world-wide perceived as an apex body for deciding the health based target values for various contaminants in Drinking water and is used by a majority of countries to decide on their norms for Drinking water.

As mentioned earlier, several State governments have declared our products totally safe. The Gujarat Government issued an official press release, after testing seventeen samples picked up within the State as well as from open markets in adjoining States, stating no pesticides under the organo-chlorine category like lindane, DDT and chloropyrifos were from in any of these samples. The two-member bench of the Mumbai High Court, including Chief Justice S. J. Vazifdar himself, mentioned in its order that the test reports of seven samples of our brands met both the Indian Standards and the European Economic Community's directive. The Central Science Laboratory, the UK's biggest lab, had certified that our products met the EU standards for individual pesticides in beverages after testing samples sent to them by another news publication, Outlook.

"Considering the dimensions of the consequences of the CSE expose, the August experience is an eye-opener to all the multinationals adopting double standards in India, if not a strong lesson. An incident that has unfurled at one end of the globe has crossed the geographical barriers so fast that the Wall Street began to take notice, too. The faraway consumer problems had the potential to affect, for instance, Coca-Cola's most valuable asset — the reputation for quality conveyed by its brand name and built over a century. The Coca-Cola Bottling Company Consolidated (Coke) stock dipped by five dollars in the New York Stock Exchange from $55-$50 in the six sessions following the August 5 disclosure, as did the shares of the Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCA)."

These are sweeping statements without any basis or truth whatsoever.

"However, suspecting that the final product could be contaminated with dangerous levels of chemicals, why the companies remained silent remains a question."

Soft-drinks companies even when alleged by the CSE reports had confidently reiterated that their products are completely safe and world-class, based on the data they had maintained by getting the samples analysed by accredited labs from India and abroad. Levels of contamination as found by CFTRI and CFL had also found the results to be safe as per the WHO guidelines for drinking water. The panic created by the CSE report and thereafter was ill-founded and hence been refuted by findings by the two Government and PFA Labs.

India being an agriculture based economy, usage of pesticides is inevitable in India, however the solution lies in controlling and monitoring the use of pesticides and planned changeover to less harmful, more effective pesticides for agriculture use. However, suspecting the toxic nature of these pesticides, enough checks and controls are maintained by the beverage industry to ensure that the source water meets the pesticide residue norms as specified by Indian Drinking Water Standard (IS 10500:1991). Beverage industry uses state-of-art and proven multiple barrier water treatment processes to further purify the source water.

WHO, FAO and Codex are the international bodies which specify the Maximum Residue Limits (MRL) and Tolerable Daily Intake (TDI) for most of the pesticides used globally and which ensures that the pesticides intake within these limits on daily basis is safe for human consumption during an entire lifetime.

FAO and Codex also set MRLs for primary agricultural produce (which are much higher than the drinking water norms). They have not set MRLs for any processed foods like soft drinks but state that the final product limits should be derived from the MRLs of the ingredients used for manufacturing, based on the carry-over principle.

EU norms on drinking water (80/778/EEC) gave concessions to the Industry for more than twenty years and regularly monitored the residue levels in drinking water in all member states before enforcing the law. For member-countries which will still not be able to meet the norms, EU still has a provision to grant extension for further 3-5 years for implementation of the EU norms in the respective territories.

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