THE BOTTLE BATTLE CONTINUES- ARE WE LISTENING. Review on Pepsi

I am again reiterating my concern for the health of the general public.

The CSE has come up with a live bomb again. They are again pointing fingers at the 2 giant cola MNCs in India namely COCA COLA and PEPSICO.

This time again they are being charged of high pesticide content in its various beverages. But this time the levels are even higher than before.

Now the question that arises is What our Govt bodies are doing about this, since the time this news was made public by CSE in 2003 and the subsequent vindication by the JPC.

I was sad to know that despite a time-span of 3 years having passed, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has finalised a standard for soft drinks but has abstained from notifying it.CSE, a member of the BIS committee, has fought hard to get the standard notified. The Central Committee on Food Standards endorsed the JPC report way back in February 2004 and agreed to set final standards. But since then it has been lost in committees after committees. It has now set up a National Expert Committee to do a pilot study to check pesticide residues in sugar. It has not set a time-frame for when the standards will be finalised. But it does not want BIS to notify its standards.

Our politicians are also doing nothing but making empty promises or shouting slogans. They are just doing what they are best at where MNCs are concerned - MNC bashing. Just another way of wasting time and money at the parliament meetings. And who anyway pays for it? It is us, the people of India who have so trustingly put our health, hard earned money, fate and destiny in the hands of a few power and money-hungry politicians.

The MNCs are playing their own game. They say milk and vegetables have more pesticides than colas. But milk and vegetables also have nutrition. They give us something in this poison-nutrition trade-off. We get nothing from colas- Just pesticides. Harmful and deadly for our children, the future generation of India.

The CSE was founded two decades ago by the late Anil Agarwal, a crusading environmentalist. Its chairman is Dr M S Swaminathan, one of India's foremost agricultural scientists and winner of international accolades like the Ramon Magsaysay Award, the World Food Prize and the Tyler Environment Award. The Center says the problem lies with India's regulatory system. While in the United States soft drinks must be pure, the group said, in India there is a huge legal loophole: One law says food must be pure but indicates beverages aren't food, while another says beverages must be pure but does not mention pesticides.

Now it left to our intelligence as to how to interpret this collusion between the govt and the two giant companies. The govt. may take a few more years to reach a conclusion about the standards for the soft drink industry. But, we as aware citizens and concerned parents should take a conscious decision about letting our children consume this poison day after day.

I also think that something should be done that would ban our superstars to act in the ads for these companies. They need to act in a more responsible way and not promote products that are hazardous to our health. On one hand Shah Rukh Khan has stopped smoking realizing the harm it can do to a person. On the other hand, he is promoting unhealthy products to the public. Aamir Khan too stands up for the cause of Narmada Bachao Andolan and lent support to the cause of Medha Patkar,but he does not think twice when it comes to making a few crores if he has to promote a slow poison.Like we have anti smoking day, smoke free zones and awareness programmes for anti smoking, similarly we should allocate a day or a week in the year to promote anti soft drink campaigns.

I would like to invite all MS members to comment on my review and to spread the awareness against this slow poison.