Fizz cola: It's safer than milk

A Joint Parliamentary Committee hasstarted inquiring into the affair of pesticides in soft drinks. The controversyhas been analysed from several angles. Here is a new one. Even thebest products need good marketing to succeed. CSE has a good product (concernfor the environment). Pepsi believes it has a good product too. Bothneed to market themselves to gain fame and fortune. Now, Pepsi and Coke aresupposed to be among the best marketers in the world. Yet, in this case CSE hasbeaten them hands down. Consider the facts. CSE tested 12 drinks andclaimed these had 11 to 70 times the pesticide residues permitted under EuropeanUnion norms. Nonsense, said the MNCs, our drinks are certified safeby world-class independent labs, and their pesticide levels are well withinsafety limits of the World Health Organisation. Tests in governmentlabs showed modest pesticides levels within legal Indian limits. Outlookmagazine had samples tested by an independent lab in England, which pronouncedthem safe.Both the MNCs and CSE claim they are vindicated. This mustpuzzle readers. The accompanying table should clarify matters.Let’s accept CSE data, regardless of what others say, andcompare these with EU norms for various edible items in Europe. Youwill find that Pepsi has 37 times as much pesticide as the EU norm for water.How dreadful!But compare Pepsi with other edible products and atotally different picture emerges. Even going by CSE data, Pepsi is 191 timessafer than milk and cream. It is 242 times safer than eggs. It is 538 timessafer than bovine meat. And it is a whopping 4,118 times safer thanapples.Now, Europeans have high health standards. They are surelycareful about milk, which babies drink. If Indian Pepsi is 191 times safer thanEuropean milk, it cannot be dangerous. They say in England, an applea day keeps the doctor away. If Pepsi is 4,118 times safer than an apple, can itbe a health hazard? Now, government labs found the pesticide levelin Pepsi to be just 0.00025, or 75 times less than the CSE estimates. CSE claimsthe two samples are non-comparable. Surely this is irrelevant.According to government lab tests, Pepsi is 14,325 times safer thanEuropean milk. Going by CSE data, it is 191 times safer. Either way, it issurely safe.There remains a puzzle. Why are EU norms for milk andapples so much higher than for water? One explanation is that EU politicianshave, as a lofty political aim, declared that water should be totally free ofpesticides, and so adopted an idealistic norm that they have yet to fulfil.But for agriculture, Europeans come down from lofty idealisticheights to practical matters like keeping farming profitable. Hence the mildernorms. Some say that humans consume more water than milk or apples,and so water should be purer. Fair enough. But the same logic surely applies toCoke/Pepsi, which are consumed much less than water, and much less than evenmilk by young children. Finally, there appears to a clearprotectionist bias in EU norms. Beet sugar, made in Europe, is allowed a totalpesticide content four times higher than cane sugar (which is exported byIndia). Which casts doubt on whether we should follow European norms at all. What’s the bottom line? CSE could have compared Pepsi and Cokewith European milk, and declared them to be safer. This analysis would haveprovoked no newspaper headlines or uproar in Parliament. So, instead, CSEcompared Pepsi/Coke with European water, and so got blazing headlines and fame.It was a brilliant marketing strategy. The facts presented were notconcocted. They were just packaged to ensure maximum impact. Misleading? Well,maybe, but no more so than MNC advertisements claiming that ‘‘thingsgo better with Coke’’.Pepsi and Coke spent much energycontesting CSE’s data. Instead Pepsi should have embarked on a massiveadvertising campaign saying that, according to CSE, Pepsi was 191 times saferthan European milk and 4,118 times safer than European apples. That would haveconverted an apparent criticism into a glorious advertisement. Thelesson is clear. Coke and Pepsi should sack their marketing managers and hirereplacements from CSE.