India – suppliers, consumers, and manufacturers – is experiencing a social panic over noodles, particularly those related to brand-name Maggi. Tests conducted showed that ingredients containing lead breached accepted levels, and a massive recall is being instituted. Nestlé, maker of Maggi, has instituted emergency measures and says it will remove all instant noodles from store shelves; its local-unit shares have fallen 15 percent this month. Other major food-makers have been drawn into the fuss, which could affect India’s own production facilities at a time that the US is the seventh-largest importer of the country’s products. Peter Wilhelm
Kartikay Mehrotra & Natalie Obiko Pearson
(Bloomberg) — The man who helped spark one of India’s largest food recalls — prompting NestlĂ© SA’s top executive to rush to New Delhi last week — says government authorities lack the resources for widespread inspections.
VK Pandey’s team in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, randomly picked about a dozen packs of Nestlé’s Maggi instant noodles for a series of tests. The results showed that lead levels breached official limits, triggering a recall across a swathe of India and import bans in Nepal and Singapore.
“We would’ve sent more samples of Maggi, but we have a manpower shortage,” Pandey, an officer with Uttar Pradesh’s Food Safety & Drug Administration in Barabanki district, said by phone. “There’s been one vacancy open for three years.”
Nestlé, whose local unit has seen its shares decline about 15 percent this month, said it will remove all instant noodles from Indian shelves to give trust a boost. Global Chief Executive Officer Paul Bulcke told reporters that the company tested more than 1,000 batches of noodles and found the India-produced Maggi to be “safe and well within the regulatory limits”.“With the consumer in mind, we will do everything it takes, and are fully engaged with the authorities to clarify the situation to have Maggi noodles back on the shelves at the earliest,” Bulcke told reporters in New Delhi on June 5.
The crisis marks the highest-profile case for India’s seven-year-old national food regulator and the patchwork of local agencies responsible for ensuring food is safe across the world’s second-most populous country. “The government should have a pan-India monitoring system across food categories, but it doesn’t,” said Amit Khurana, programme manager for the food safety team at the Centre for Science & Environment in New Delhi.
Establishing a credible regulator is key for India to attract investment into food processing as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to spur a manufacturing boom. The food services market alone is growing at nearly 12 percent each year and will be worth $175-billion by 2018, CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets said in a 2013 report.
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, known as the FSSAI, ordered a recall on June 5, calling samples of Maggi tested by various states “unsafe and hazardous for human consumption”. More than half of India’s 29 states have banned Maggi, according to reports from the Times of India newspaper over the past few days.
The regulator on Monday ordered state authorities to also test by June 19 samples of pasta and noodles made by seven companies, including Nestlé, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare Ltd, Nissin Foods Holdings Co’s India unit, and ITC Ltd, according to a statement on its website.
“We will provide all support to the authorities and ensure that we remain in complete compliance with the law,” GlaxoSmithKline said in an e-mail. Indo Nissin’s Retasha Lewis and ITC spokesman Nazeeb Arif didn’t respond.
Nestlé India’s shares fell again Monday on reports, including one in the Times of India, that Modi’s government will seek damages from Nestlé through the national consumer forum. The stock fell 7.4 percent in Mumbai.
Multiple calls in the past few days to the office of Yudhvir Singh Malik, the FSSAI’s chief executive officer, weren’t answered. Neither were calls and an e-mail to Rakesh Chandra Sharma, the food authority’s head of enforcement.
The FSSAI was established in 2008 after lawmakers streamlined a mishmash of laws dealing with adulteration, meat, fruit, oil and milk. Apart from framing rules and certifying laboratories, it advises on food safety and nutrition. Enforcement of the rules is left to local authorities. There’s no real-time monitoring system such as that in the US, where the Food & Drug Administration helps quickly identify, analyze and take action on violations relating to food or medicine.
India is the seventh-largest provider of food to the US, according to the FDA. In March, the US regulator signed an agreement with India to cooperate more on food safety. “We left our meeting with FSSAI assured that we are on the same page with our Indian colleagues about our food safety goals, as well as the amount of work — and collaboration — needed to achieve them,” FDA officials wrote in a March blog post.
The Maggi incident started when Pandey’s team sent packs of the Nestlé’s Maggi noodles for a routine lab test 14 months ago. The test came back positive for monosodium glutamate, or MSG, a chemical used to enhance savoury flavours. Subsequent tests 750 miles away in Kolkata confirmed the MSG and reported excessive amounts of lead, about seven times the prescribed maximum.
Pandey said his department filed a court case with information about the lead and MSG content to force the company to take action. Nestlé disputed the findings in August, citing previous cases in other states as precedent, he said.
After continued tests, Pandey said state officials asked Nestlé in April to pull Maggi from stores. That sparked widespread media coverage, criminal complaints against Maggi and criticism of its celebrity brand ambassadors.
“A scandal like this in some sense brings the problem to light,” Ashwin Bhadri, CEO of Equinox Labs, a Mumbai-based company that helps companies comply with food safety regulations. “If this hadn’t happened, nobody would be talking about food safety.”