Coca-Cola, Sprite, Fanta and other soft drinks are being recalled across Europe because of safety fears, after the discovery of high levels of a chemical by-product from chlorine disinfectants.
Some of the drinks, sealed in cans and glass bottles at a factory in Belgium, contain “excessively high chlorate content”.
The affected products are: Coca-Cola, Sprite, Fanta, Fuze Tea, Minute Maid, Nalu, Royal Bliss and Tropico. Not all the brands are widely sold in the UK.
Coca-Cola Europacific Partners Belgium told the AFP news agency the contaminated drinks have been distributed in Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, France and Luxembourg since November.
Chlorate, which can cause iodine deficiency, is a by-product of chlorine disinfectants widely used in water treatment and food processing.
“The majority of the affected and unsold products have already been removed from store shelves and we continue to take measures to remove all remaining products from the market,” Coca-Cola told AFP.
Commenting on the quantities involved, the firm added: “We do not have a precise figure, but it is clear that it is a considerable quantity”.
The drinks maker said the issue was discovered during checks at a plant in Ghent.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has not yet issued a recall in the UK but is “investigating if any Coca-Cola products containing ‘higher levels’ of a chemical called chlorate are on the UK market,” said the FSA’s Anne Gravett.
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Meanwhile, Belgium’s food safety regulator, the Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain (AFSCA), has issued a recall “due to excessively high chlorate content”.
“The recall is limited to brands in cans and returnable glass bottles bearing a production code ranging from 328 GE to 338 GE,” said a statement on its website.
The production code can be found on the bottom of the can or on the neck/label of the glass bottle.
The AFP news agency said Coca-Cola’s French branch suggests independent experts had “concluded that the probability of an associated risk” was “very low”.
