'Counterfeit water' investigated in China

China’s food safety watchdog today promised to probe a report that more than half of water coolers in Beijing use counterfeit branded water.

The water is either tap water or purified water from small suppliers put into the water jugs and sealed with bogus quality standard marks, the Beijing Times newspaper said in a lengthy investigative report.

Local officials had shut down a Beijing bottled water distributing station and seized safety seals and labels bearing the names of local brands.

An official at China’s food safety watchdog said the agency was investigating the report, but noted a May inspection of Beijing’s drinking water products found more than 96 percent were safe.

“Problems found with some individual cases cannot be interpreted to mean that the entire water industry has problems,” Wu Jianping of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine told a press conference.