Nestle India says the ban imposed by FSSAI on Maggi was arbitrary, not thought out, and based on tests that were conducted at unaccredited laboratories
Nestle India is appealing against the 5 June FSSAI order which banned the sale and manufacturing of the popular Maggi 2-minute noodles after monosodium glutamate and excessive traces of lead were discovered in some samples.
Nestle India Ltd said on Friday that the ban imposed by the food safety regulator on Maggi noodles was arbitrary, not thought out, and based on tests that were conducted at unaccredited laboratories, as the local unit of the Swiss multinational opened its arguments against the ban in the Bombay high court.
“It seems to me the regulator was under pressure to do something as there was a lot of media attention the issue was gathering as state reports started coming in,” Nestle India’s lawyer Iqbal Chagla said before a two-judge bench.
Nestle India is appealing against the 5 June order of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) which banned the sale and manufacturing of the popular Maggi 2-minute noodles after monosodium glutamate and excessive traces of lead were discovered in some samples.
The appeal also covers a 6 June order by the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration which conducted its own tests and banned the product.
The tests were all conducted in laboratories that are not accredited by the National Accreditation Board for Laboratories (NABL) to test either for lead, or cereals and spices used in the product, Chagla told the bench comprising judges V.M. Kanade and B.P. Colabawalla. He also said the company did not get a show-cause notice, which is a statutory requirement, before the ban was imposed.
The lawyer also cited contradictions in test results, with one laboratory confirming the presence of excessive lead and another finding none in samples from the same batch of the snack.
The test done in a Kolkata lab, on the basis of which the controversy unfolded, was conducted on a sample past its expiry date, said Chagla, who is representing Nestle India along with Pallavi Shroff and Ameya Gokhale of the law firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co.
According to Chagla, a total of 72 samples were tested by various state authorities at their laboratories, of which 30 samples failed to meet with the lead requirement and the rest were cleared. Twenty states cleared Maggi after their tests; seven (Gujarat, Maharashtra, Telangana, Delhi, Assam, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu) found the lead content to be high and banned its sale.
Chagla said the states tested only three variants of Maggi—masala and chicken flavours and vegetable atta noodles—and yet, the ban was imposed on all the nine variants.
Nestle has destroyed 24,000 tonnes of the 30,000 tonnes of Maggi stock.
This has caused a loss of `2,500 crore amounting to 20% of the company’s annual revenue in India, said Chagla. He claimed Nestle had also suffered brand damage because of the ban.
FSSAI banned Maggi noodles, terming them “unsafe and hazardous” for human consumption after finding high levels of lead and the presence of taste enhancer monosodium glutamate.
The FSSAI and the Maharashtra FDA will present their case to the court on Monday.
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