PepsiCo and Coca-Cola on Friday joined hands to caution against the "blind" adoption of European norms as these could have serious implications on the Indian economy, while asserting compliance with the European Union standards for their brand products sold in the country.
"There are no standards for pesticides in soft drinks anywhere in the United States or European Union. The EU norms only specify that the water used in soft drinks should be potable...we are meeting EU norms on source water in India with total pesticide levels well below the permissible 0.5 ppb," Rajeev Bakshi, chairman, PepsiCo India Holdings, told PTI in New Delhi.
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He said blindly adopting the EU standards is an ill-conceived strategy, fraught with risk both in qualitative and quantitative terms for a developing country like India which would make 90 per cent of its groundnut crop inedible, liquid milk undrinkable and processed milk products unusable.
Taking the Centre for Science and Environment to task, Bakshi said, "We have sufficient doubts that CSE's report is erroneous. It has used suspect testing methods...it has created panic."
A Coca-Cola spokesperson said, "Our products are of unimpeachable quality not only in India but across the world. If the government decides to bring in any new norms, we will comply with those too."
Bakshi said the lab used by CSE was neither accredited nor recognised and could not have helped with cross references of results arrived at in a particular lab.
Making a case against aping the EU, he said, "Is the EU the repository of all knowledge? Are they the only 'consumer friendly' standards setting organisation worldwide?"
Hitting out at the CSE, he said it claims to have used the USEPA 8141A method to arrive at its results but there are serious deviations from the standardised test methodology.
The actual properties adopted to conduct the tests do not match the USEPA prescribed procedures.
Furthermore, the USEPA 8141A method is prescribed for testing water and not soft drinks, he said, adding this can lead to erroneous conclusions because a number of ingredients are added in water to manufacture a soft drink.
He said the CSE had benchmarked the alleged presence of pesticides in 'soft drinks' against the permissible limits in the EU for 'water'.
The CSE report focuses on detection of increased levels of four pesticides in the soft drinks brands but fails to elaborate on the limit upto which its intake by humans is safe.
Hazard identification is only one of the four aspects detailed by the WHO, others being hazard analysis, characterisation and safe dose level for humans.
"The allowable residue levels for the same four pesticides in other product categories strangely are significantly higher. CSE report says nothing about this at all," Bakshi said.
Expressing confidence that PepsiCo's position will be vindicated, Bakshi said the motivated and malicious CSE report will be duly discredited.
Protecting the health and safety of consumers in India is a fundamental role of the government and can be responsibly discharged, without CSE intervention, he said.
PepsiCo on its part will work towards rebuilding consumer trust and confidence.
Bakshi said the recommended carrier gas under the USEPA 8141A method, which the CSE claims to have followed in its tests is helium at six ml per minute but the NGO actually used nitrogen at 1.3 ml a minute.
Under the USEPA method, the makeup gas recommended is helium at 20 ml per minute, while CSE used nitrogen at 25 ml/minute. The injector temperature recommended is 250 degree centigrade and detector temperature is 300 degree centigrade, while the corresponding figures in CSE lab tests are 270 and 300 degree centigrade.
There are similar serious deviations on temperature programme, film thickness and column used, he said.
Pepsi on its part had got the water it uses to make soft drinks, tested at Vimta Laboratories, Hyderabad, which is accredited, recognised and open to public scrutiny. The results have been cross-referred with TNO Labs, in the Netherlands, he added.
Bakshi said CSE is trying to give a wrong impression on health implications of presence of pesticides in soft drinks by quantifying the number of times its levels was found to be higher in the tests than what was permissible under the EU norms for water.
The CSE report does not mention that the EU limit for pesticide residue of lindane, DDT, chloropyrifos and malathion combined in the case of milk and cream is 7,139 times higher than in water.
Bakshi said in apples the permissible EU limit for these four pesticides combined is 1.54 lakh times more than in the case of water.
The maximum DDT residue limit for water is 0.0001 mg/kg but in the case of apple it is 0.0500 mg/kg, while for meat it is 1 mg a kg which are 500 and 10,000 times higher than water respectively.
The limits cannot be said to have been fixed on the basis of intake of a particular product as by no stretch of imagination does a European consume 10,000 times more water than meat, he said.
If India was to "blindly" adopt EU standards, it cannot produce whisky locally unless from malted grain. It will have to import basic foodstuffs and cereals to meet EU food safety standards.
"Standards are dynamic and must evolve to address market needs and India's own competitiveness", he said.
Before setting up a plant in a particular place, PepsiCo has samples of water drawn from that area and only after rigorous tests does it go ahead with manufacture of soft drinks at the site, he added.