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New York: After being banned in India on health concerns, Nestle’s Maggi noodles, a staple for Indians living away from home, has come under the scanner of the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA), which has taken samples for testing.
"We have been made aware that the FDA has taken samples of Maggi noodles manufactured in India from third-party importers' containers for testing, and we have asked the importers to advise us of the outcome of the FDA tests," said a spokesperson for the Swiss food and beverage giant, Nestle SA.
Lauren Sucher, Press Officer of US FDA, told The South Asian Times, “The FDA is aware of Nestlé’s removal of Maggi brand noodles from the Indian marketplace. The agency is looking into the issue. At this time it is not clear whether US products are affected by the ongoing recall in India.”
The policy guidelines issued by the FDA for importing food into the country don’t specially refer to instant noodles. However, according the regulatory body says that the permissible levels for lead in candy is at 0.1 ppm. The lead found in Maggi noodles samples tested in India was 17.2 ppm, several times more than the permissible levels.
Despite the scare, the instant food brand continues to sell in Indian and some other grocery stores across the country.
“We have not received any instructions from FDA on product recall or ban. There is a slight dip in the sales due to the media reports in India but the product continues to sell at stores,” said a spokesperson for the House of Spice, one of the major distributors of Maggi in the US.
Besides selling in India, Nestle India also exports Maggi noodles to the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Singapore and Kenya, as per the company’s global website.
The product is a huge money churner for Nestle, as big sales in the US indicate. The high number of Indian immigrants here seem to be driving Maggi noodles imports.
According to Zauba.com, in the last two years, India has exported 22,94,057 units of Maggi noodles worth $1,68,33,520. The US, Canada and the UK are among the top 10 importers of Maggi noodles; USA’s share being 35%.
The Maggi row in India and its fallout outside the country has put a spotlight on other ethnic Indian products imported that are rejected by the USFDA.
Data on the USFDA website shows that it has rejected more snack imports from India than any other country in the first five months of 2015. Indian products were found to contain high levels of pesticides, mold and the bacteria salmonella, a report in the Wall Street Journal said. More than half of all snacks that were tested and then restricted from being sold in the US this year were from India, which also leads the number of snack rejects across the world.
The WSJ report also mentions that most of the rejected food items from India actually came from Nagpur-based snacks giant Haldiram’s – among them sugar candies and Indian snack mixes – rejected because of pesticides in them.
Baked Indian snacks also finds it difficult to enter the States, says the report. More than half of the 217 baked products rejected by the US FDA so far this year were from India and 50% of the rejected 36 items in the spices, flavors and salt category were from India.
“USFDA has strict standards when it comes to food quality. Often food items get held up in random testing. Earlier one Indian rice brand was under FDA import alert after high levels of pesticide were found in them,” said the spokesperson at House of Spice.