NEW DELHI, Aug 21: The Indian government said on Thursday that soft drinks sold by Coca-Cola and Pepsi met local standards and did not include the high levels of pesticides as alleged in an environmental group’s report that triggered nationwide protests.

The government said its tests of the US giants’ 12 soft drinks named in the study showed all were “well within the safety limits” of India. But it acknowledged that most of the beverages were not up to the higher levels in force in the European Union.

“The results clearly show that all the 12 samples do not have pesticide residues of the high order as was alleged in a report by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a Delhi-based NGO (non-governmental organisation),” Health Minister Sushma Swaraj told parliament.

“It is also to be noted that the assertion of the soft drink manufacturers that their product is within the EU limits has also not proved to be correct for 100 percent of the samples,” she said.

A number of lawmakers responded furiously to Swaraj’s statement, demanding why Indian safety standards were below those in Europe. Swaraj responded that the government was considering introducing EU norms for bottled water and soft drinks from next year.

Speaker Manohar Joshi moved to calm down the angry lawmakers by telling them the parliament would set up a committee, including opposition members, to conduct further studies about pesticides in soft drinks.

The CSE stunned India’s 500-million-dollar a year soft drink industry on August 5 with charges that the 12 Coke and Pepsi brands contained a “deadly cocktail of pesticide residues” that could cause cancer and birth defects.

It said the same drinks sold in the United States did not contain the pesticides and accused the multibillion-dollar companies of not purifying their source water in India.

Sales of the soft drinks sank immediately after the report and the Indian parliament ordered the beverages out of its cafeteria. Activists ranging from leftists to right-wing Hindus staged protests across the country, smashing bottles of Coke and Pepsi and burning pictures of the many Indian film stars who advertise for the soft drinks.

Responding to Swaraj’s comments, CSE director Sunita Narain accused the government of “whitewashing” the public health risks of soft drinks and said her group “will now have to put a lot more effort to bring this matter into the public eye.”—AFP