Final BIS meeting to set pesticide and caffeine standards for soft drinks in Hyderabad

The Drinks and Carbonated Beverages Sectional Committee, FAD 14, of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is holding its eleventh, crucial and final, meeting to set standards for soft drinks on Friday, May 27, 2005 in Hyderabad. The issues are critical as BIS is trying to set standards for pesticides, pH and caffeine in soft drinks.

The BIS committee has been working for the past two years to bring to an end to the process which started with the release of the study on pesticides in soft drinks by the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in August 2003. The committee members include representatives from industry (including soft drink companies), consumers groups, environmental groups, other government agencies and civil society members.

There is tremendous pressure from the industry to dilute the standards, and if possible, not to have pesticide standards for soft drinks. Consumer and environment groups are working together to get this crucial standard so important for public health. Though in principle the soft drink companies have agreed to pesticide standards in soft drinks, they now say that the government should initiate a long-term study to find out how much pesticide is getting into soft drinks from sugar.

Over the past two years, data from hundreds of sugar samples was collected from various sources and analysed by the BIS committee. These data show very little pesticides in sugar. Experts from sugar institutions and government institutions too have informed the committee that the pesticide residues in sugar is insignificant because of the cropping characteristics and the purification processes undertaken during sugar manufacturing. Even the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC), set up to investigate pesticide residues in soft drinks, had opined the same, and had concluded that sugar couldn’t be a significant source of pesticides in soft drinks.

Despite all this, the industry is not satisfied. They want more data, from all over the country, to be collected and paid by the government, before any standards are set. The truth is that the effort of cola companies and some industry associations has been only to prevaricate and delay the finalisation of standards, using sugar as a pretext.

In July 2004, the BIS committee had finalised the draft standards on soft drinks and had circulated the same for wide public comments. Most public comments supported the BIS draft standards; only soft drink companies and a few large industry associations opposed the draft standards. Many small-scale companies though, favoured the final product standards for soft drinks.

Just after the public comments were received, BIS had set up an expert committee to look at the public comments and recommend final standards for soft drinks. During the deliberations in the expert committee, in which industry as well as NGOs and consumer groups participated, consensus was reached on the standards for caffeine in soft drinks. The committee agreed to recommend the new caffeine standard as 145 mg/l instead of the existing 200 mg/l.

Consensus was more or less also achieved on the pH value for soft drinks. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in response to a parliament question, had responded that pH below 2.5 is harmful to humans. The committee decided to adopt this as a standard, but with some reservations on the part of the industry, which wanted much lower standards for PH.

Consensus however was not reached on the issue of pesticide standards. It is this standard that will be finalised in the Hyderbad meeting on 27 May 2005.

The meeting will be held at National Institute of Nutrition (Indian Council of Medical Research), Jamia Osmania PO, Hyderabad, 10.30 AM onwards.

Sunita Narain, director, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), and Chandra Bhushan, associate director, CSE, will be attending the meeting.