According to a report from the French food safety authority …

According to a report from the French food safety authority (Anses), which the newspaper "Le Monde" and Radio France revealed in early April, water from the Swiss company Nestlé Waters is contaminated with E-coli bacteria, fecal matter, as well as traces of pesticides, fertilizer, and PFAS. Affected are famous mineral waters such as Perrier, the brands Vittel and Hépar. The Anses informed the government already in autumn 2023, but instead of warning consumers, it withheld the information from them.

On 30 April 2024, France must therefore answer to the other EU member states at a meeting of the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (ScoPAFF). The European Commission is conducting an examination of the French authorities and is also checking questionable practices on-site. There is suspicion of corruption, cover-up, fraud, and endangerment of health.

Several NESTLE springs are so heavily contaminated that selling the water would be punishable. However, European regulations prohibit any disinfection of mineral water. Its purity is supposed to come from underground water sources protected from contamination, which must naturally be of high microbiological quality – in contrast to tap water, which is disinfected before it is safe to drink. The sometimes hundredfold price of mineral water compared to tap water is justified this way.

However, two further scandals come to light: Nestlé Waters, according to French media, informed the authorities as early as 2021 that it had resorted to prohibited treatments with UV and carbon filters on some of its mineral waters in order to "maintain food safety," said a spokesman for Agence France-Presse (AFP) already in January 2024, thus confirming information from the news publication Les Echos.

The Senate has now established an ad-hoc committee to investigate the water scandal.
A 53-year-old rapporteur of the committee, Antoinette Guhl, wants not only to investigate how the mineral water became contaminated, but also to examine the relationship between government and the water industry. Not only was the government informed, but even worse: the government allegedly allowed Nestlé by prefect decree* in February 2023 to explicitly filter its water with microfilters. The company then promised to refrain from the prohibited UV rays and activated carbon. Following the recent revelations, Nestlé announced that the quality of its mineral water is always guaranteed. "We will continue to bottle mineral water from boreholes that comply with strict standards for natural mineral water and prefect decrees," "Le Monde" quoted the corporation, which is being investigated by the Épinal public prosecutor's office** for fraud.

*a prefect is the highest administrative official of a department in France.
**Épinal is the capital (prefecture) of the French département Vosges in the Grand Est region.

Contamination in tap water as well as in expensive bottled waters occurs regularly. Anyone who filters their drinking water themselves at home with the help of a professional reverse osmosis filter followed by subsequent revitalization has the greatest certainty of drinking clean, toxin-free water. This is also more cost-effective, more sustainable, and more environmentally friendly. You can find more information about water, reverse osmosis, or a modern high-end water filter in this channel.➡️

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