Cola drinks are safe: Soft drink majors

The Kerala government's ban on cola drinks has prompted manufacturers to reiterate their stance that their products are absolutely safe and meet every safety standard set by food, health and regulatory bodies in India and all over the world.
 
On the ban, the Indian Soft Drinks Manufacturers Association (ISDMA) said:  "We have not received any formal communication from the government on this subject and we will only comment once we do so. We have learnt of this only from media reports."  
 
Reacting to the ban, the Coca-Cola company said, "Consumer safety is most important to us. The soft drinks manufactured by the company in India comply with all stringent national as well as international norms."

All products from the Coca-Cola company "are completely safe and fully meet all the chemical, microbiological safety parameters prescribed by the regulatory bodies in the country," the company statement said: "soft drinks are primarily made of water, sugar and concentrate. Each of these three major ingredients meets all the existing and proposed standards. There are no methodologies that have been validated by any international body to test pesticides in soft drinks anywhere in the world." 

The statement adds the company gets its products and raw materials tested regularly at recognised and independent national and international labs such as Vimta (Hyderabad), Central Science Lab (London) and MWH (USA) to fully ensure that soft drinks consistently meet all possible consumer safety norms. "Our existing manufacturing processes, quality and safety testing methodologies are stringent enough to ensure that our soft drinks already comply with the proposed norms which are yet to be notified by the regulators," the statement added. 

"All our ingredients are food grade quality. All food additives used in our products in India have been cleared by the Central Committee for Food Safety (CCFS) of India based on JECFA (Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives) standards," the statement added.