Bottled-water manufacturers had adopted a variety of quality standards, including national standards set by different ministries, standards by local governments and those by the companies and the industry themselves. This has caused confusion.

AMID concerns over a lack of supervision of the bottled water industry, the Chinese National Centre for Food Safety Risk Assessment announced recently that the authorities are unifying different standards for the industry.

The centre said that the National Health and Family Planning Com­mission was improvising four or five current national quality standards related to bottled drinking water and would finish the work by the end of the year.

A new unified national standard would be implemented for the industry players by 2015.

This is part of the commission’s ongoing work under the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) for Food Safety and Quality Standard to streamline about 5,000 standards for different food and beverage and agricultural products in China, reported Xinhua.

Currently, manufacturers of bottled water have to comply with standards such as the Natural Mineral Drinking Water Standard (GB8537-2008), Bottled Drinking Pure Water Standard (GB17323-1998), Hygiene Standard for Drinking Pure Water in the Form of Bottle and Barrel (GB17324-2003) and Hygiene Standard for Drinking Water in the Form of Bottle and Barrel (GB19298-2003).

The state news agency reported that whether it was bottled or packaged in the form of a barrel, all kinds of drinking water sold in the market should comply with the same quality standards as drinking water from the tap.

Media reports on Nongfu Spring Holdings Co Ltd – one of China’s largest bottled-water producers – which applies the drinking water quality standard of the Zhejiang provincial government instead of the much stricter national standards has caused a public outcry.

For example, the permitted amount of toxic arsenic is no more than 0.01mg/litre under the national standard.

But the maximum amount allowed is 0.05 mg/litre under the provincial standard applied by Nongfu Spring.

International Food Packaging Association secretary-general Dong Jinshi was quoted by China Daily as saying that a unified national standard was necessary and must cover all mandatory indexes of bottled water.

He said bottled-water manufacturers had adopted a variety of quality standards, including national standards set by different ministries, standards by local governments and those by the companies and the industry themselves.

This had created confusion among the public and made supervision and quality control by the authorities more difficult, he added.

He also revealed that some manufacturers misled consumers, saying they used water sourced from natural springs to make their bottled drinks when it was actually sourced from tap water.

Following the Nongfu Spring reports, the Beijing Association for Barreled Drinking Water advised sellers and operators of barreled drinking water in the city to stop selling such products from Nongfu Spring.

The association said in a statement that the manufacturer had failed to provide any quality certificate or quality report on the water products it sold in the form of barrels.

Local press reported that Nongfu Spring suppliers had stopped delivering the barrels of water and sales of the products had dropped significantly in the wake of the crisis.

Drinking water stored in barrels with a capacity of 19 litres are sold to households and offices citywide.

The major brands include Nestle, Cestbon, Nongfu Spring and Wahaha.

The Zhejiang-based Nongfu Spring had maintained that the company complied with quality standards higher than the national standards.

Last Thursday, the company posted on its microblog a certificate issued by the United States National Testing Laboratories Ltd which states that samples of the Nongfu Spring bottled water have met the US Food and Drug Administration’s quality standards.

The company had earlier posted other test reports on quality standards at its four factories in Zhejiang, Hubei, Guangdong and Jilin provinces.

In its editorial, Beijing Times, which first broke the news and has been a vocal exponent of the crisis, said Nongfu Spring had been “telling their own stories” since the news broke last month.

“Even if the report (by the US National Testing Laboratories) is authoritative and accurate, this cannot hide the issue of them not meeting the standard.

“The problem with Nongfu Spring is that it abandoned the national standard in implementing the quality standards for its products but opted for a more relaxed provincial standard. Now that the problem has been identified, it’s time to correct it,” the editorial said.

The newspaper urged the Zhejiang authorities to investigate the matter.

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