prasad1
Active member
The Food Safety Commissioner SN Jayaram, made a statement recently that nearly 60 per cent of Bangalore’s packaged drinking water does not have ISI certification though it is mandatory.
This came as a startling revelation as the City is steadily becoming more dependent on bottled and canned water.
According to the Public Health Institute (PHI), there are over 1000 illegal producers of drinking water in the City. “They don’t get the ISI certification because it is a huge investment. It costs almost six to eight lakh extra to get the certification,” says SN Nanjundaiah, the chief food analyst at the PHI.
According to him, most of the non-ISI marked ones are put through an Reverse Osmosis (RO) system and purification process but don’t have a lab and technicians, which is mandatory according to the ISI.
He says that they conduct 14 tests and if the manufacturer fails in even one, their product will not get through to the market. “We check for labelling — whether they write the expiry date, manufactured date, batch number — and the ISI certification,” said Nanjundaiah.
Companies like Aquafina, Kinley and Bisleri monopolise the bottled water market but obscure names like Aqua Fresh, Aqua Mira and Blue Nile dominate and flood the canned-water market.
This came as a startling revelation as the City is steadily becoming more dependent on bottled and canned water.
According to the Public Health Institute (PHI), there are over 1000 illegal producers of drinking water in the City. “They don’t get the ISI certification because it is a huge investment. It costs almost six to eight lakh extra to get the certification,” says SN Nanjundaiah, the chief food analyst at the PHI.
According to him, most of the non-ISI marked ones are put through an Reverse Osmosis (RO) system and purification process but don’t have a lab and technicians, which is mandatory according to the ISI.
He says that they conduct 14 tests and if the manufacturer fails in even one, their product will not get through to the market. “We check for labelling — whether they write the expiry date, manufactured date, batch number — and the ISI certification,” said Nanjundaiah.
Companies like Aquafina, Kinley and Bisleri monopolise the bottled water market but obscure names like Aqua Fresh, Aqua Mira and Blue Nile dominate and flood the canned-water market.
