For more than 120 years, the French brand Perrier has produced some of the world’s most recognizable sparkling mineral water, its teardrop-shaped green bottles and light, fizzy bubbles synonymous with European refinement and good taste.
Recently, however, the brand has found itself embroiled in a decidedly inelegant scandal involving food and drink regulations, the definition of “natural” water and, this week, accusations of a cover-up that reached the upper levels of the French government.
At the heart of the issue is the marketing of Perrier as “natural mineral water,” a term whose use is strictly regulated by France and the European Union.
French regulators and independent consumer watchdogs have accused Nestlé Waters, Perrier’s French parent company, of using filters and ultraviolet sterilizers for years to treat the water it bottles from wells in Provence. The methods ran afoul of French and E.U. regulations, they said, and altered the water to the point that it could no longer be labeled “natural.”
This month, officials in the Gard region of southern France, where Perrier’s water is sourced, ordered the company to remove its water filters within two months while authorities decide whether to demand that Perrier change its labeling.
The dispute widened this week when the French Senate released the findings of an investigation that found Nestlé had concealed its treatment of Perrier and other brands of bottled water with the help of the French government, which the report accused of covering up “illegal practices.”
The company has said its treatment methods are intended to guarantee the safety of its product, after growing indications of contamination in natural sources. But Perrier’s troubles also raise a bigger question: Amid worsening environmental degradation, is “natural mineral water” — filtered by the earth without human intervention and free from pathogens and pollution — even possible anymore?
“This is part of a longer trend of growing threats to groundwater,” said Peter Gleick, a climate scientist and co-founder of the Pacific Institute, an Oakland, Calif., research institute focused on water issues. “It’s becoming harder and harder to find waters safe from contamination.”
A very French scandal
Consumer advocacy groups have accused Nestlé of defrauding consumers for years by marketing treated Perrier water as “natural,” which they say allowed the company to charge higher prices than competing brands.
Last September, after an investigation by Le Monde newspaper and Radio France detailed Nestlé’s practice of filtering and sterilizing Perrier, the company agreed to pay a fine of 2 million euros ($2.25 million) to settle a lawsuit over its treatment methods.
The French Senate report published this week brought the issue back into the spotlight, accusing the French government of bowing to pressure from the company, a major employer.
It found that in 2021, Nestlé Waters began lobbying the French government, including officials in the ministry of industry, to allow it to continue selling Perrier as “natural” despite treating it. Members of President Emmanuel Macron’s office knew “that Nestlé had been cheating for years,” the report said.
“This scandal is a sort of textbook case of regulatory capture and state-industry collusion,” Alexandre Ouizille, the French senator who led the six-month investigation, said in an interview.
Senator Ouizille said Nestlé’s treatment and labeling practices had netted the company at least €3 billion, and he described deliberate efforts to conceal the fraud. At a Perrier plant in southern France, investigators found a movable armoire that hid an area where “illegal treatments” were carried out, he said.
In a response, Nestlé did not admit wrongdoing but said the inquiry had revealed “common challenges” for the bottled water industry and the need for greater “clarity and consistency” in regulations.
“With food safety as a primary goal, the company reiterates that all its natural mineral water products on the market have always been and remain safe to drink, and their unique minerality is as shown on the label,” the statement said.
Mr. Macron’s office did not respond to a request for comment. He said in February that there had been no “agreement” with Nestlé and “no collusion with anyone.”
Ingrid Kragl, the founder of Foodwatch France, an independent watchdog that has sued Nestlé over its practices, said the inquiry showed that the company operated as if it was “above the law.”
“The fact is that they did illegal things for years and they made billions of profits by breaching regulations, by not informing consumers, by going to the French government asking for exceptions,” she said.
The ‘romantic’ idea of pure water
The naturally effervescent waters at Vergèze, Perrier’s source, have been prized at least since Roman times, when they were sought for their supposedly curative properties.
In the early 1900s, St. John Harmsworth, an English aristocrat, spent time in the spa town in Provence while recovering after a car crash. He later bought the spring from a French physician, Dr. Louis Perrier, and began bottling and selling its waters.
By 1933, Mr. Harmsworth was producing 18 million bottles of water a year. A half-century later, Perrier was the largest natural mineral water company in the world.
In 1990, the company faced a crisis. It recalled its entire inventory of Perrier in the United States, about 72 million bottles, after benzene was found in a small number of bottles. The chemical was discovered by county officials in North Carolina who had considered the water so pure that they were using it as a testing standard.
But Perrier seemed to recover: Two years later, it was acquired by the Swiss conglomerate Nestlé, which boosted production to 1.7 billion bottles in 2021, according to Bloomberg.
The repercussions of the Senate report this week were not immediately clear. Senator Ouizille said the findings were at the disposal of French prosecutors, who may decide to initiate criminal proceedings or further investigation.
Perrier’s latest troubles strike at the core of the brand, pitting its reputation for natural purity against harsh environmental realities. Experts say that groundwater is increasingly contaminated by human activity and climate change, including more extreme flooding that can push pollutants into water resources.
Last year, Nestlé destroyed 2 million bottles of Perrier after traces of fecal bacteria were discovered in one of its wells following heavy rains. Around the same time, a leaked report revealed that a French regulator had found traces of pesticides linked to cancer in the water where Perrier is sourced.
Months later, a separate leaked report from a regional French health agency concluded that the quality of the water in Vergèze had deteriorated to the point that Nestlé should consider halting production there.
In February, the Nestlé conglomerate’s chief executive, Laurent Freixe, suggested in an interview with the Swiss news media that the concept of natural mineral water was becoming increasingly unrealistic, and that regulations needed to adapt.
“This romantic idea that you can take pure water from the source, bottle it without any intervention and ensure food safety is just that: romantic,” he said. “It doesn’t stand up to the reality of human activity.”
Mr. Gleick, the scientist, agreed that it was becoming harder to source water free from human contaminants. But he also noted that companies such as Nestlé have made billions promoting that same romantic idea.
“They want to sell spring water because it carries a premium in the public’s eye,” he said. “Now if they’re just reprocessing it the way they process tap water, it’s harder and harder for them to claim that. And as people learn that, they’ll lose money.”
Jonathan Wolfe is a Times reporter based in London, covering breaking news.
The post A Perrier Clash Has People Asking: Is ‘Natural’ Water Even Possible Anymore? appeared first on New York Times.
