Coca-Cola issues safety recall of soft drinks in Europe over chemical chlorate concerns

BRUSSELS (AP) — Coca-Cola has recalled some of its soft drinks in Europe after higher-than-normal levels of a chemical called chlorate were detected in bottles and cans at a production plant in Belgium.

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.”