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Batches of Coca Cola, Fanta, Sprite, Minute Maid and Fuze Tea
were among the products recalled in Belgium, Luxembourg and the
Netherlands, the company said on Tuesday. The recall concerns
drinks with production codes 328 GE to 338 GE.
“We are also in contact with authorities in a very small number
of European markets – France, Germany and Great Britain – where
a very limited quantity of stock was also shipped,” the company
said. No produce was recalled in those countries.
Health authorities in Denmark, Portugal and Romania were
notified by the European Union’s rapid alert system to
investigate whether shop shelves or vending machines had been
stocked with potentially contaminated soft drinks. It designated
the risk as “serious.”
Chlorate comes from chlorine disinfectants which are used in the
treatment of water used for food processing. The chemical has
been linked to potentially serious health problems, notably
among children by interfering with the proper functioning of the
thyroid gland.
Coca-Cola said that it tracked the problem back to one specific
container used in its water treatment process at its factory in
the city of Ghent while conducting routine safety checks.
It has advised customers not to consume drinks from the batches
concerned and to return them to the point of sale to obtain a
refund. “We apologize to consumers and our commercial partners,”
the company said.
Experts say consumers would have to drink a lot of any product
contaminated with chlorate to suffer vomiting or other serious
illness.
“It is almost non-existent or very unlikely that those large
quantities are present in it," Philippe Jorens, a poisons and
critical care professor at Antwerp University Hospital, told
Belgian public broadcaster VTM. “You have to have consumed so
many different bottles of it to possibly see an effect.”
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