Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Wednesday, Dec 17, 2003
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Wednesday, Dec 17, 2003 |
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Marketing
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Standards & Benchmarks Pepsi withdraws case against CSE Our Bureau
New Delhi , Dec 16 COLA-major PepsiCo India Holdings Pvt Ltd on Tuesday withdrew from the Delhi High Court its petition challenging the report of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) that alleged the presence of pesticide residue in soft-drinks. This came even as the cola company deposed before Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) that was probing the pesticide controversy. Pepsi officials told Business Line that it withdrew its petition since the JPC was already deliberating the issue and it had "full faith" in the JPC. On the timing of the withdrawal, the official said that the company deliberated over the issue and acted on the said date when the case came up for hearing. However, the CSE Director, Ms Sunita Narain, said that the cola company withdrew its petition, as on one hand it claimed to meet norms that were more stringent than the European Union (EU) norms, but on the other hand, it made presentations before the JPC on the difficulties in adopting EU norms. According to agency reports, Pepsi's petition was declared ``dismissed as withdrawn'' by Mr Justice B.D. Ahmed, who on August 11 had directed the Government to perform laboratory tests on the samples of Pepsi's products stating that the issue concerns public health. In the course of the hearing, however, a JPC was constituted to probe the issue and the Government received the laboratory tests of the samples. Pepsi and its bottler had filed a petition within three days of the CSE study demanding independent evaluation of the ``damaging'' report. The cola company had said that the CSE laboratory had no accreditation. The petition had also listed the Union Ministries of Health, Defence and Food Processing Industry as respondents, besides the Bureau of Indian Standards, CSE and its Director Ms Sunita Narain. Meanwhile, Ms Narain said in a communiqué that the cola company withdrew its case on receiving CSE's counter affidavit, which argued that "the claims the cola giant made in its petition were incorrect and misleading. Withdrawal of the writ petition against CSE means PepsiCo accepts its products do not meet international standards,''.
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