NEW DELHI: The expert committee of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has rejected the information and data provided by the Centre of Science and Environment (CSE) on pesticide residue in soft drinks.

This is the second report of the expert committee, headed by D. Kanungo, Additional Director General of the Ministry. The first one had described as inconclusive the CSE report.

After deliberation over three days, the committee concluded that based on the information and data provided earlier and subsequently through its letter dated September 5, 2006 by the CSE, the results and conclusions reached by the CSE in its report cannot be accepted at their face value.

The committee met on September 8, 11 and 12.

It examined the comments and clarifications provided by the CSE on its previous report, though, certain micro scientific issues would have been better addressed across the table. In reaching the conclusions, the committee drew on the long standing experience and expertise of the members in their fields of speciality, the committee has said in its report posted on the Ministry's website.

The main findings were that the CSE had not offered any comment on the earlier observations of the expert committee on certification for analytical testing. There was specific certification, namely, IS/ISO/IEC 17025:2005-Indian Standard General requirements for the competence of testing and Calibration Laboratories (First Revision) prepared by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) Committee on Conformity Assessment (CASCO). Hence, it was presumed that the centre agreed with the contentions made by the panel.

The CSE in its comments provided some details on the sampling methodology adopted. The panel said there was nothing to show that the methodology was appropriate. Since the sampling itself was far from satisfactory, the results may also not be accepted as foolproof.

The panel agreed that the EPA methodology, meant for estimation of pesticides in solids and liquids, can be used for soft drinks as well. But since it was not for exclusive analysis of soft drinks, it needed to be validated before use in this case.

The CSE had not confirmed even now whether the validation of methodology was carried out before use. As such the results relating to the presence of different pesticides in the quantity found by the CSE in its analysis cannot be accepted beyond doubt.

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