The exchange between Nongfu and rival C’estbon Food & Beverage has since led to calls that the country now has too many—as opposed than too few—criteria governing food safety, according to state news agency Xinhua.
The claims and counter-claims began with a report in the Beijing Times, which quoted Ma Jinya, secretary-general of the China National Health Association Drinking Water Committee, as saying that Nongfu’s water standards breach national regulations.
Lagging behind
The company is based in eastern Zhejiang province, which is yet to update its standards to fall in line with the rest of China, and currently allows more than five times the arsenic that is deemed safe elsewhere in the country.
However, Nongfu maintains its own standards surpass government-set limits, and alleged that its rival, C’estbon Food and Beverage, which is based in Shenzhen, had planted the story with the authorities.
"We have reason to believe that recent reports targeting Nongfu Spring were created by C'estbon Food & Beverage, " the company said in a statement posted on its official account on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.
C'estbon has since denied the charges from Nongfu Spring, claiming that the counter-accusation had been intended to divert public attention away from the claims. C’estbon has also reserved the right to take legal action.
In November 2009, the Bureau of Industry and Commerce in the city of Haikou in south China's Hainan Province issued a warning regarding Nongfu Spring's 30% mixed vegetable and fruit juice, as well as its C-100 grapefruit juice, due to high arsenic content.
Cleaning up
The charges against Nongfu Spring were later cleared by the national consumer quality watchdog.
According to analysts, the Nongfu-C’estbon allegations are a result of China’s surplus of standards, which it needs to clean up. The country has formulated nearly 5,000 compulsory food safety criteria due to its excessive number of government departments, Xinhua quotes Wang Guojun, a member of the Committee of Experts of the China Food Industry Association, as saying.
"In fact, the current controversy over the criteria is all about interests," Wang said, "if the government fails to voluntarily upgrade industrial standards, enterprises will stay silent over cost concerns," said Wang.
"The revision of such criteria, if there is any revision, should not be manipulated by large enterprises."