Coke, Pepsi India Fight Pesticide Residue Claims in Court

NEW DELHI, India, August 8, 2003 (ENS) - Two giant international soft drink manufacturers, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, have taken legal action in the Indian courts after a scientific study was published showing high concentrations of pesticide residues in 12 drink brands including Coke and Pepsi. The study was released Tuesday by Centre for Science and Environment, an environmental organization based in New Delhi.

The revelations have caused a countrywide panic including expressions of outrage from groups across the country who are smashing and burning bottles of Coke and Pepsi and calling for a ban on the popular drinks.

As of today, the state of Kerala will ban Coca-Cola and Pepsi brands of soft drinks in government guest houses and canteens, and the two brands will not be served during parties hosted by the government, a top official told the state parliament.

Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt Ltd. has taken action in the Mumbai High Court in Bombay. The company's petition challenges the Maharashtra government for confiscating a large stock of the company's aerated water products from its Pune plant following the report of alleged pesticide contents.

The Hindustan Coca-Cola petition came up for hearing before a Bench headed by Chief Justice C.K. Thakker, which allowed the state government time until August 11 to file a reply.

Today PepsiCo India filed a writ petition in the Delhi High Court seeking to restrain the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) from publishing the report. But the report, "Pesticides in Cold Drinks," has been posted since Tuesday on the CSE website at: http://www.cseindia.org/

PepsiCo India also is asking for independent evaluation of the "damaging" report.

Children may be affected by contaminants in soft drinks to a greater degree than adults. (Photo credit unknown)

The Bureau of Indian Standards, Centre for Science and Environment and its director Sunita Narayan are also respondents in the PepsiCo India case.

The company has asked the High Court to direct the government not to act on the basis of the CSE report. The CSE said it found residues of lindane, DDT, malathion, and chlorpyrifosup to 36 times the maximum allowable limits set down by European regulations for pesticides in water used as food.

The environmental organization says these agricultural pesticides have contaminated groundwater used in the manufacture of the soft drinks.

"Each sample had enough poison to cause, in the long term, cancer, damage to the nervous and reproductive systems, birth defects and severe disruption of the immune system," the CSE report said.

The CSE's Pollution Monitoring Laboratory, which conducted the tests, found pesticide residues in bottles of the two soft drink brands sold in India, but no residues in bottles of Coke and Pepsi sold in the United States.

Coca-Cola, in a statement issued today, claims that the soft drinks it manufactures in India “conform to the same high standards of quality as in the U.S. and Europe and that there is no duality of standards.’’

Pepsi, in a separate statement, claims that all its products met all international standards and that the company has delivered only "safe and world-class quality" drinks to Indian consumers. "All Pepsi products meet and indeed better the most stringent testing standards," the company said.

But the controversy has exploded beyond the controversial CSE laboratory report. This week two Indian state governments intensified matters by accusing the two drinks companies of causing cancer, kidney failure and miscarriages. The West Bengal government said today that its Pollution Control Board has found high levels of the toxic metal cadmium in waste released from Coca-Cola and PepsiCo plants.

On Wednesday, the Kerala Pollution Control Board made a similar claim about Coca-Cola's Plachimada plant.

Meanwhile, the Centre for Science and Environment is contemplating legal action against the cola companies for attacking the organization's credibility and for not presenting relevant data to support their allegations that their soft drink brands are safe.

Indian man enjoys a soft drink. (Photo credit unknown)

Coke has released data on tests done for 12 sites in Indiaby the Nutrition and Food Research Laboratory, based in The Netherlands.

But CSE says Coke's data pertains only to a bottled water product called Kinley. "This is not data related to its soft drink products," CSE said. "It is not even data for the plants that manufacture soft drinks."

In the case of Pepsi, CSE said, the data relates to its Aquafina bottled water plants, and the tests have been done for raw water and treated water.

On the website mentioned in its ad, PepsiCo has published the results of tests on only one bottle of Pepsi, from its Matura plant. "This confirms the statement made by the director of Vimta labs, Dr. S.P. Vasi Reddy to CSE that Vimta had received only two samples of Pepsi in March, this year," the organization said.

CSE today said that it "welcomes the Union government’s initiative to have soft drinks sold by the two cola giants independently tested for pesticide residues."

The environmental organization has advised the government to also test for residues of cadmium, arsenic and lead, since the standard for these hazardous substances is 50 times higher than what is legislated for the bottled water industry, according to CSE lab tests.

The environmental group cautioned the government to ensure that these tests are done "extremely carefully to ensure complete independence and credibility of results."

CSE warned that "these are powerful companies," and said the organization has been "witness to industry pressurising government to whitewash the truth." CSE gave an example from 2001 of the Kerala Plantation Corporation which was found by CSE tests to have allowed the pesticide endosulfan to accumulate to "very high levels of the pesticide in the food and water of the village" of Padre.

Tests commissioned by Kerala Plantation showed no endosulfan was present. But subsequent tests by the Indian Council of Medical Research confirmed the endosulfan levels CSE had reported, and documented the high levels of reproductive, congenital and neurological diseases in the village population, due to endosulfan exposure.

CSE disassociated itself from the groups that are breaking soft drink bottles in protest of the pesticide residues. "We have consistently maintained it is not Coke per se and Pepsi per se that are to blame. It is the lack of government regulations," the environmental organization said today. "Therefore, instead of breaking cold drink bottles, it is important for the same activists to instead point accusing fingers at the weak regulatory framework for the soft drink industry."

The CSE soft drinks report can be read in full at: http://www.cseindia.org/html/cola-indepth/softdrinks_report.pdf

Read the August 5 ENS report, "Toxic Pesticides Found in India's Soft Drinks."

{T.C. Malhotra contributed to this report.}