Coca-Cola and Pepsi are changing how they make an ingredient in their drinks to avoid being legally obliged to put a cancer warning label on the bottle.
The new recipe for caramel colouring in the drinks has less 4-methylimidazole (4-MEI) – a chemical which California has added to its list of carcinogens.
The change to the recipe has already been introduced in California but will be rolled out across the US.
Coca-Cola says there is no health risk to justify the change.
Spokeswoman Diana Garza-Ciarlante told the Associated Press news agency they wanted to ensure their products “would not be subject to the requirement of a scientifically unfounded warning”.
The chemical has been linked to cancer in mice and rats, according to one study, but there is no evidence that it poses a health risk to humans, said the American Beverage Association, which represents the wider industry.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) claims a person would need to drink more than 1,000 cans of Coke or Pepsi a day to take in the same dose of the chemical that was given to the animals in the lab test.
Coca-Cola and PepsiCo account for nearly 90% of the US fizzy drink market, according to one industry tracker, Beverage Digest.
The companies say changing their recipes across the whole of the US, not just in California, makes the drinks more efficient to manufacture.
In a statement Coca-Cola added that the manufacturing process across Europe would not change.
It said that apart from California “not one single regulatory agency around the world considers the exposure of the public to 4-MEI as present in caramels as an issue”.
California voters passed Proposition 65 in 1986, and the law aims to protect state residents from “chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm, and to inform citizens about exposures to such chemicals.”
A California court ruled in December 2011 that 4-MEI could be listed as a known carcinogen under Prop 65.
WHETHER OR NOT THEY ACCEPT THEIR PRODUCTS CAUSE CANCER IN MAN WE ALREADY KNOW HOW DANGEROUS COKE AND PEPSI ARE TO THE HEALTH OF MAN.HENCE,I DON’T DRINK COKE NOR PEPSI.
Greed, this capitalist economy is harzadous, all they care about is profit maximization, to hell with dem& their fucking drinks.
what is the major difference between coke and pepsi? And if can drinks are dangerous, why impose such detrimental consequence on comsumers?
those soft drinks should be not be produce any more because they lead to cancer disease. Why should they produce drinks that are harmful to the body system. That means they want people to die. World health organisation who should seize their lincence.