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Furore over 'clean chit' to soft drinks firms

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI AUG. 21. The Government today agreed to set up a Joint Parliamentary Committee to inquire into allegations of high-level of pesticide residues in soft drinks in the wake of demands by the Opposition parties in the Lok Sabha that a JPC be set up to probe the matter.

The demand followed a statement by the Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Sushma Swaraj, in which she said that "the samples of the soft drinks tested were well within the safety limits as per the existing standards of packaged drinking water".

Her statement sparked angry protests with the Opposition parties alleging that the two big soft drinks manufacturers had been given a "clean chit" by the Government. "How much donation was paid before the statement was made," asked Satyavrat Chaturvedi of the Congress.

Charges flew thick and fast as the Minister sought to defend the report sent by the Central Food and Technological Research Institute, Mysore, and the Central Food Laboratory, Kolkata.

The Samajwadi Party's Mulayam Singh Yadav demanded that the Government agree to set up a JPC. He was supported by the Congress, the Telugu Desam Party and the Lokjanshakti Party.

Reacting to the Opposition demand, Ms. Swaraj said the Government had no objection to setting up a JPC. Stung by charges that she might have helped the soft drinks manufacturers, Ms. Swaraj said that as far as she was concerned she had no objection even if the JPC comprised only Opposition members.

"Let it be headed by an Opposition member, I have no objection," she said.

She challenged Mr. Chaturvedi to name the person who had received the donation and urged the members to refrain from casting aspersions on the CFTRI findings. "It enjoys an international reputation and is not under the control of the Health Ministry."

Earlier, in her statement to the House, Ms. Swaraj said that the "results clearly showed that all the 12 samples do not have pesticide residues of high order as alleged by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) report and were well within the safety limits". The samples were sent for examination to the CFTRI and the CFL and her statement was based on their findings.

Though the safety standards had been met by the soft drinks manufacturers, the Government was considering bringing in European Union (E.U.) norms for water content in soft drinks, she said. "It is also to be noted that the assertion of the soft drink manufacturers that their product is within the E.U. standards has not proven to be correct for 100 per cent of the samples," she added.

Later, Ms. Swaraj told reporters that the JPC could consist of 14 or 21 members. If it was a 21-member committee, 14 could be from the Lok Sabha and seven from the Rajya Sabha.

The CFTRI laboratory was the "only accredited laboratory in the country" and that was why it had been selected for testing. She announced her intention to "upgrade several food testing laboratories in the country", admitting that testing facilities were not adequate.

"The existing norms may have been adequate some time ago when the use of pesticides in India was much less, but now with increasing use of pesticides, the groundwater and other water sources are likely to be more contaminated and therefore stricter norms need to be in place," she conceded.

By April 2004, E.U. norms would be enforced for bottled mineral water, and "there was no reason for the Government not to consider applying the same norms to the water content in soft drinks as well", she said. The norms would specify the methodology of tests the product needed to pass.

She denied the CSE's charge that the lethal chemical, malathion, was present in the soft drinks. If the CSE report had been correct on this point, "we would have been dead", she said.

But she emphasised that she did not want to denigrate the CSE and was thankful to it for highlighting a problem that needed attention.

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