Nestle India did not opt for re-test, instead burnt Maggi: FDA
Nestle India did not opt for re-test, instead burnt Maggi: FDA

Food and Drugs Administration, Maharashtra, today argued in the Bombay High Court that Nestle India had burnt several tones of Maggi after the state's ban order was imposed on this food snack, instead of going in for a re-test of the samples, reported PTI.

"If the company was so confident about safe features of its product, it should have come forward and requested us to go for a re-test of the samples or it could have offered other samples for a fresh examination," FDA counsel Darius Khambata submitted before justices V M Kanade and B P Colabawala.

The court was hearing a petition filed by Nestle against FSSAI's on 5th June order banning nine variants of Maggi and Maharashtra government's order prohibiting their sale.

20 samples of Maggi were selected at random by FDA for the test and five of them tested positive for containing lead beyond permissible limit. This was enough for FDA to issue notice to stop production and sale of all the nine variants of Maggi, Khambata said.

He further argued that if the company suspected that the FDA reports were not correct then it could have made a complaint before the food regulator to send the samples to an accredited lab in Pune or Nagpur, instead of rushing to the high court to challenge the ban imposed on production and sale of the product.

"Instead, Nestle chose to send samples to labs in London, New York and Paris and placed 2700 test reports before us (FDA) to show that lead content was proper," he said. FDA counsel also rightly said on the ban that after tests when FDA found lead content in Maggi to be beyond permissible limit, it issued an order banning the product.

Additionally, FDA had sent lab test reports to Nestle but the company has not included these in the petition, thereby suppressing this fact from the high court, he said.

FSSAI and FDA both of them claimed that they had issued notices to Nestle India keeping in mind the health hazards that the product may have had due to the high lead content.  

 
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