With the sales of all major soft drink brands dropping and in an effort to clear its image from the ongoing pesticide controversy various soft drink manufacturers have now planned a strategy to aggressively advertise the safety levels of their products to prove their innocence. Although it’s not quite certain if this strategy would work or not but its already brought up another controversy.

The Tea Board of India has expressed unhappiness over one such advertisement of Pepsi reportedly showing tea containing more pesticide residue than the soft drink.

The advertisement allegedly showed that the residue level present in tea was 14.2 ppm (parts per million) and 28000 times more than the standards prescribed by health ministry.

Meanwhile R D Nazeem, Executive Director of the Board, Nilgiris quoting an analysis of UPASI Tea Research Foundation carried out in 2005/2006, has said that the level (of residue) in tea was extremely low, much lower than that prescribed under the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act.