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Monday, Aug. 7, 2006

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India's highest court has ordered Coca-Cola to disclose the formula for its beverage for the first time ever.

The formula has been closely guarded for 120 years, and it is known today only by two executives – who never travel on the same plane. But India's Supreme Court demanded that the soft drink maker, along with its rival PepsiCo, reveal the chemical composition and ingredients of their products after a study alleged that they contained high levels of pesticides.

"If they don't comply, then the court has the authority to suspend sales," Shreyas Patel, a lawyer at Fox Mandal Little, India's oldest law firm, told The Times in Britain.

"But no one is going to give away a 120-year-old secret, especially in a country like India. Someone would go and make it themselves."

Coca-Cola syrup is shipped from the U.S. to bottling plants around the world, and mixed with local water.

The court order came after the release of a report by the Centre for Science and Environment, a non-governmental body in India, which claimed that 11 brands sold by the two soft drink companies had unacceptable levels of pesticide residues.

The group said that Coke samples had 25 times the amount of pesticides as three years ago, while Pepsi products contained 30 times more.

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The two companies joined forces to issue a statement maintaining that "the soft drinks manufactured in India comply with stringent international norms and all applicable national regulations."

Reports of unacceptable pesticide levels in 2003 prompted schools to ban colas and Coca-Cola sales dropped by more than 10 percent in the next financial quarter.

"Coca-Cola and Pepsi "are regular whipping boys for politicians who regard Western food products as a threat to Indian heritage," the Times reports, "although skeptics suggest that their opposition has more to do with the companies' virtual monopoly of the market than genuinely held feelings of cultural protectionism."

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