New Delhi, Aug 05: Government today said that it is working on revised quality norms for carbonated beverages in the wake of the upgradation of health safety standards for packaged and bottled drinking water. Deputy Director General of the Bureau of Indian Standards K K Goyal said that though the norms will not be mandatory. The proposal is that only bottled water should be used to manufacture soft drinks.
He said that work on norms` upgradation is already on and a high-level meeting will discuss the issue on August 18.
Meanwhile, sources in the Ministry of Consumer Affairs said that the proposed upgradation of norms for carbonated beverages has nothing to do with today`s controversy over alleged presence of excessive pesticides in soft drinks, including Coke and Pepsi.
They said that the ministry will study the report of CSE, on the subject but "prima facie the issue concerns Prevention of Food Adulteration Act (PFA) which is under the purview of the health ministry".
Earlier, CSE said that PFA and the Fruit Products Order (FPO) of 1955, both mandatory acts aimed at regulating the quality of contents in beverages do not even provide any scope for regulating pesticides in soft drinks.
The FPO, under which the industry gets its licence to operate, has standards for lead and arsenic that are 50 times higher than those allowed for the bottled water industry.
It expressed concern that industry`s use of water was not regulated and said that the soft drinks sector was exempted from industrial licensing under the industries (Development and Regulation) Act, 1951.
Bureau Report