new delhi in the backdrop of the raging pesticidescola controversy a crucial meeting of the bureau of indian standards bis will be on monday to discuss a review of standards for soft drinks including their possible upgradationin line with the directives of consumer affairs minister sharad yadav bis intends to make standards of all products dynamic with the same being revised according to the market and technological developments and not after a fixed time periodbis standards for foods and beverages are being reviewed and if necessary taken up for revision results of the review for soft drinks will be discussed in tomorrows meeting official sources saidbis had published an indian standard on carbonated beverages is 23461992 which was reaffirmed in 1997 and then again earlier this year they saidhowever yadav took the view that since human health was involved in consumption of food products all their standards must be reviewed afreshin pursuance of this directive the task of reviewing the standard for carbonated beverages was allotted to two mysorebased institutions central food technological research institute cftri and defence food research laboratory dfrltheir findings will be deliberated upon tomorrow including possible upgradation of norms for quality of water used for carbonated beverages sources said a proposal to be mulled tomorrow is issuing an advisory for use of only packaged and bottled water for manufacturing soft drinksthey said the idea is that norms governing bottled water should be applicable for water used in making colas as wellhowever they hastened to add that the bis standard for soft drinks was only for the guidance of the industry and not mandatoryin case of soft drinks bis role is very limited as it does not issue licence for this product they saidsoft drinks are under mandatory certification under fruit products order fpo of 1955 under ministry of food processing industry mfpi against their own standardsthe prevention of food adulteration pfa act 1954 or the fpo both mandatory acts aimed at regulating the quality of contents in beverages do not even provide any scope for regulating pesticides in soft drinksthe fpo under which the soft drinks industry gets its licence to operate has standards for lead and arsenic that are 50 times higher than those allowed for the bottled water industrysoft drinks industrys use of water was not regulated the sector was exempted from the industrial licencing under the industries development and regulation act 1951it gets a onetime licence to operate from mfpi including a noobjection certificate from the local government and state pollution control board there are no environmental impact assessments or specific regulations