India’s food safety regulator on Wednesday said Nestle India has not been given a clean chit regarding its popular Maggi noodles and that its ban order of June 5 was still operative despite a certified lab in Karnataka reportedly finding the snack to be safe.
“It is clarified in the first instance that FSSAI has not given any clean chit regarding the safety of Maggi Noodles,” the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India said in a statement, reacting to reports that a laboratory in Mysore had found the samples to be safe.
The watchdog also said that Nestle India has not shared with it the details of the test reports from the UK and Singapore, which purportedly had said that samples of Maggi noodles tested in those countries were found to be safe for consumption.
The statement said that the Food Safety Department of Goa had drawn five samples of Maggi noodles pursuant to a May 25 communication issued by the watchdog to all safety commissioners across the country.
These samples, were initially sent for testing to the Food and Drugs Laboratory of Goa and upon examining the reports received on June 1, it was found that the permissible limit of lead had been wrongly taken 10 parts per million, against 2.5 parts per million, it said.
The results reported by the lab also did not specify the actual lead content in the samples after which clarifications were sought from the state’s food safety authority.
