New Delhi, Aug. 23: The Centre for Science and Environment tonight said the health ministry was needlessly nitpicking on its report on pesticide residues in soft drinks, and challenged the government to make details of its own tests public.

Health minister Anbumani Ramadoss said he had not given a clean chit to Coca-Cola and PesiCo. Reacting to allegations that he was “colluding” with the soft drink manufacturers, Ramadoss said: “I am going to file a defamation case.”

The minister added that he had only said the CSE report was “inconclusive and we need more details”.

The CSE said the report of the health ministry’s expert committee reviewing the NGO’s findings was “vague, misleading, and... written with one purpose — picking holes in the CSE’s report to discredit it”.

Ramadoss had told Parliament yesterday that tests by government laboratories had shown no pesticide residues above the permissible limits. The CSE asked the government to make their details public. “What was the sampling procedure in collecting bottles? What was the methodology for testing? Did the laboratories use confirmatory tests?”

The CSE, on the other hand, has used methods “examined and endorsed” by a joint parliamentary committee three years ago, it said.

The NGO has rejected the conclusions of the expert panel point by point. The committee said malathion and heptachlor shouldn’t have been present in the samples because the first is degraded by water and the latter has been banned since 1996. The CSE said its tests have confirmed the presence of both. Heptachlor, a “highly persistent pesticide”, is likely to be found in the environment for 20 more years and, perhaps even after.

The expert committee questioned the CSE’s findings on the prevalence of different structures of the pesticide hexachlorocyclohexane, which contradicted their natural distribution. The NGO argued that the same structures have been found by scientists in milk, drinking water, pond water, vegetables and rainwater.

Another NGO today waded into the cola war. The Research Foundation for Science Technology and Ecology called for a nationwide movement to create “Coke- and Pepsi-free zones”.

“They have committed theft of water and are slowly poisoning our children,” said Vandana Shiva, the director of the NGO.

The organisation said its campaign is not based only on the issue of pesticides. Mira Shiva, the chairperson of a health task force on food safety, said the World Health Organisation has identified the hazardous effects of soft drinks as a key element in the emerging epidemics of obesity and diabetes.

As the green lobby piled its heat on them, the cola giants sang a truce tune.

Coke officials said they did not plan to sue the CSE, but wanted to meet its chief Sunita Narain to reason with her.

Pepsi, too, said it is open “to meeting the CSE at a formal forum”.