2024-04-04 19:25:00
According to the referral letter to ANSES by the regional health agencies (ARS) of Occitanie and the Grand-Est, dated April 28, 2023, appearing in the annex to the note, the company in question is Nestlé.
In the rest of the document, all mentions of the brands and sites concerned are hidden.
Bottles of mineral water from brands belonging to the Nestlé Waters group, February 21, 2024 in Paris AFP / JOEL SAGET.
Hépar, Contrex and Vittel are bottled in the Vosges, while Perrier is bottled in Vergèze (Gard).
“There is no subject on food safety,” insists the manager. It mentions the possibility of the presence of “residual traces” of pesticides, but “very significantly lower than the standards in force for mineral waters”.
For its part, the CGT of Nestlé Waters Supply Est (NWSE) “requested the holding of an extraordinary CSE in order to obtain explanations from management as quickly as possible”.
Contaminations of fecal origin
On the basis of the data provided by the two ARS, ANSES notes “multiple findings of microbiological contamination of fecal origin” at the source level, which make it necessary “reinforced surveillance extended to a panel of parameters which will make it possible to specify the vulnerability of resources to contamination by waterborne pathogenic viruses.
The Nestlé Waters logo on its Vittel bottling site, in the Vosges, October 24, 2023 AFP/Archives / JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN.
This note comes as a preliminary investigation for deception is opened by the Epinal public prosecutor’s office once morest Nestlé Waters, suspected of having used illegal treatments to purify its mineral waters, following initial revelations from the World and Radio France.
The referral to ANSES by the health authorities comes “following the identification by the public authorities on various operating sites of the presence of treatment systems upstream of the monitoring points set up following a deterioration of the quality of resources”, underlines the agency in its note.
“There is no confidence, we must stop marketing and recall the bottles,” argues the consumer defense association Foodwatch.
“Concerning finished products, bottled water, no recommendation is made”, specifies ANSES, however, before adding that the presence in “positive values” or “beyond regulatory thresholds” of microbiological or chemical elements “other than those constitutive and characteristic of mineral water (…) should not lead to the production of bottled water in order to guarantee the health quality of the natural mineral waters produced”.
The regulations concerning the quality criteria of natural mineral waters are stricter than those concerning tap water, whether at the time of collection or once in bottles.
A 2007 decree thus indicates that “at the emergence and during their marketing, water must be free of germs indicative of fecal contamination, parasites and pathogenic microorganisms”.
In its conclusions, ANSES places the responsibility on the ARS of Occitanie and Grand-Est to “make the choice between the monitoring requirements that they intend, depending on the case, to suggest or prescribe to operators, and the recommendations that they will implement as part of the health control that they will sponsor.
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