Pepsi bids to assess report on pesticide claims

Drinks giant PepsiCo has filed a petition with the Delhi High Court requesting an independent evaluation of a report which accuses Pepsi and Coca-Cola of selling drinks in India containing dangerous levels of pesticide residue, it said today.

PepsiCo Holdings India also urged the court to restrain the government from acting on the report by the Centre for Science and Environment until an independent analysis was complete, a company official said.

The report, released Tuesday, claimed the levels of pesticides found in some samples of Pepsi drinks were 36 times higher than European Union safety standards.

The Indian government has said it will conduct its own tests.

PepsiCo expected the court to make a swift decision on its petition, which was filed on Friday, to prevent further harm to its reputation and commercial interests, the official said.

The New Delhi-based research body also claimed the average pesticide level for Coca-Cola products was 30 times higher than EU guidelines.

It acknowledged that Indian brands also have high pesticide levels because agricultural pesticides are in the country’s ground water, but said the focus was on Coke and Pepsi because they account for more than three-fourths of the bottled soft drinks consumed in India.

The toxins could, if consumed over a long period, cause cancer, damage to the nervous system, birth defects and disruption of the immune system, the research centre said.

There has been a flurry of reaction to the report.

PepsiCo and Coca-Cola denied the findings, saying the quality of the soft drinks they sold in India were the same as in Europe and America. But several government departments, including Parliament, banned the sale of Coke and Pepsi in their canteens.

News reports Friday said production at the two companies’ bottling plants in India had slowed since the report was released and some states said they were independently.