Pepsi maintains its products are 'perfectly safe'

Notwithstanding Central Food Laboratory report claiming higher pesticide content than EU norms, Pepsi said its products were "perfectly safe".

Notwithstanding Thursday's Central Food Laboratory report claiming higher pesticide content in soft drinks than EU norms, Pepsi said that its products were "perfectly safe" and were produced as per global quality standards.

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"We reiterate that our products are perfectly safe and are produced in accordance with best international practices and conform to the best international quality standards," Pepsi said in a statement.

It referred to the statement of Health Minister Sushma Swaraj in Parliament on August 21, in which she had "comprehensively covered the safety and health issues of our products".

But, Swaraj said on Thursday that the Central Food Laboratory found some of the soft drink samples of Pepsi and Coca-Cola contained much higher levels of pesticides such as lindane and DDT than permissible under the EU norms.

The findings showed that lindane was present in all the soft drinks that were tested but was higher by 1.1 to 1.4 times the Eurpoean norms in 33 per cent of the samples.

Also, many of the samples contained DDT and metabolites above the EEC norms while another pesticide, chlorpyriphos was also present in all the samples, it showed.